
Class 
Book. 



/■^o 



Gardening by Myself. 



BoxtiSk 



AN NA^ WARNER. 



Nor does he govern only, or direct. 
But much performs himself. 

The Task. 



NEW YORK: 

ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH & CO., 

770 Broadway, cor, 9TH St., 



i'ST^ 



35^05- 

,W3 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, by 

Anson D. F. Randolph & Co., 

Ie the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C. 

SOURCE UNKNOWN 

AUG 2 1940 



^ 



Edward O. Jknkjns, 

PRINTER AND STEREOTYPER, 

20 North William Street, N. Y. 



J- 



F 



PRE FAC E. 

Gardening by oneself is so lovely, and so 
easy a thing, that I would fain have every- 
body try it. Do not mistake me : you can- 
not do everything without glass and garden- 
ers, and that convenient helper popularly 
called " The Bank of England." But you 
can do so much, that you may well be con- 
tent ; and even be able to listen quietly to 
some one giving an unlimited order for 
priceless carnations, what though the 
thought comes to you (as it did to me) : 

'* I had but three, my own seedlings, and a 
grub eat up one of them." 

The thought that there are two left, will 
be very sweet to you, even then and there 
Touchwood's label is not the worst that can 
be put upon a plant : 

" A poor thing, sir, but mine own." 

But there is no need of raising poor 
things ; and you can hardly imagine, before- 
hand, how much dearer such friend-flowers 
are, than any, even the most splendid, mere 
acquaintances introduced by a professed 
gardener. 

I wish everybody had a garden, and 
would work in it himself, — the world would 



4 PREFACE. 

grow sweeter-tempered at once. Why you 
may deal with one great florist after an- 
other, (I know, for I have dealt with a good 
many) and you will find nothing but cour- 
tesy and pleasant words from the beginning 
to the end. No urging you to take what you 
do not want, no clipping the measure of 
what you buy ; but on the contrary, your 
insignificant little orders are rounded out 
with unexpected treasures. As if the flor- 
ists could not bear even to think of empty 
gardens, while theirs were so full ; or else 
had a sort of gentle sympathy for the peo- 
ple who expect to live upon fifty cents' 
worth of flowers for a whole year. 

I think it is Mr. Biglow who solaces him- 
self with " More last words." I know there 
are many I might say. There are flower 
names you will look for here, and not find. 
The fair faces of my Campanula Lorei, look 
at me reproachfully even now, from a dis- 
tance; with the pink Eucharidiums, just 
unfolding their fresh colour. And there is 
Viola Cornuta, and my superb new Gen. 
Jacqueminot rose. But if I mentioned ev- 
erything, when should I have done? Not 
till my book was altogether too big lor you 

to buy. Shahweetah, 5^««^ 28, 1872. 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 



JANUARY. 

Pines, ef you're blue, are the best friends I know, 
They mope an' sigh an' sheer your feelin's so. 

— Lowell, 

I THINK it is not 
common to choose 
this, month for a visit 
to Fairyland. Yet, as 
you never do thor- 
oughly know people 
unless you have lived 
with them, so neither ^ 
do you well appre- ^^ 
ciate Fairyland, unless ^/%'^;Jy^^<)sSV^ 
you have dwelt there ^<J R^"^ ^ 
all the year. All parts 
of it indeed are not 
open at all times ; and 
just now an explorer ^^^^™'^-^^'^^^''^'''°'"^"^'''' 

J . c i^ v.^j^i.wi-^1 SHELL, WITH KENILWOKTH IVY. 

must be content to tarry for awhile at the 
I* (5) 




/g?a 



6 GARDENING BY MYSELF. 

gates, making himself comfortable by the 
lodge fire. But there are fair views to be 
had from thence, and good reading is plen- 
t}^, and abundant materials for consideration 
and study ; and there is work enough to do, 
if that's all, and if you know how to do it. 
Oh ! but it is pleasant to escape into Fairy- 
land fi-om the every-day cares and labours 
ai^d dust, and to study the wonders God is 
preparing, and to think of the underground 
Avork in progress, and to use our own glad 
hands as agents, [f they are glad and will- 
ing — that is enough ; the skill will come. 
And to help and encourage a wee bit, and 
to advise just a little, I think I must tell 
what Fairyland is to me. 

I should say, to begin, that I do not mean 
by this the enchanted regions of professed 
gardeners, — neither of those people who 
are blessed with that very useful, trouble- 
some, self-willed appendage to a flower gar- 
den. My Fairyland does not spring up 
under glass, nor out of money, nor with 
"facilities." For people having all these 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. y 

I do not write, — nor for '^ young florists," 
intending to make the business their pro- 
fession. Mr. Henderson's book may instruct 
them. They must begin all right, and work 
on by line and rule. 

But the people for whom I write begin 
anywhere, — with the first flower or seed 
they happen to pick up ; and then work on — • 
anyhow ! That is, not heedlessly, nor neglect- 
fully, but as they can. Therefore not by line 
and rule, which is often an impossibility ; but 
in some strange wildwood way making a 
path through difficulties, and reaching their 
Fairjdand '' cross lots." Well they know 
what I mean, when I say that if you have 
not a syringe you must water plants through 
your fingers ! Or if they do not, I can tell 
them and they'll work it out. 

With some people flowers are a fixed 
fact, a necessity ; and thence follows endless 
pains-taking, tireless patience, and wonder- 
ful success. They are the people for whom 
'' everything grows." 

Do you see that old brown house by the 



8 GARDENING BY MYSELF. 

roadside ? — guiltless of everj^thing but weath- 
er paint ? — and in the window an old rough 
box? Look now at the magnificent '* lam- 
brequin " of sweet peas, which drapes the 
window and almost hides the box in which 
they grow. There are no new varieties, it 
is true, — neither " striped, from Ceylon," nor 
scarlet, suriiamed, *' invincible." "Painted 
ladies," ever}^ one of them, but such a solid 
phalanx of their bonny faces I never saw. 

Do you see this other house; low, un- 
pretending? Two poor men live there — 
bachelor brothers ; dail}^ workers for their 
daily bread. There is no show of anything 
about the house, inside or out, Avith just one 
exception. Each side the front door, like 
a supporter of its humble dimensions, stands 
an immense hydrangea ; with heads of 
bloom that can rival anything. And of the 
rare colour too (whichever that is ! — I'm al- 
ways as puzzled as the old woman about 
her bluing) — the colour that everybody 
tries for, and fev/ can induce. All the other 
hydrangeas in the village are in their native 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. g 

rose, but for the two old brothers the blos- 
soms are always blue. (I know Fm right 
now '.) They have their secret, as to the 
how and the why. 

Next door to a small city church that I 
have seen, stands the Sunday School house; 
and in the third floor of this lives the sexton. 
His little windows look down upon city 
yards— poor specimens, some of them ; — and 
only the eastern lookout makes his windows 
bright. 

Across one of the windows, trained from 
side to side till the whole is covered with a 
net-work of twigs and leaves and blossoms, 
a honeysuckle stretches its pretty sprays, 
growing contentedly in a pot on that third 
story window-sill. Or if not contentedly — 
yet hiding its discontent in the most suc- 
cessful endeavors to brighten the small 
world in which it lives. I said it was the 
sexton's window — but I am quite sure the 
honeysuckle belongs to his wife. 

In a poorer home than this, in a tene- 
ment garret in London, stands an iv)' ; its 



10 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 



roots nourished m four flower-pots, its leaves 
curtaining the small windows, with their up- 
per surface laid close against the glass. The 
old human inmate of the room '' keeps hei- 
self happ3^ by reading her Bible and loving 
her ivy !" — The plant and its poor owner 
seeking the light together, and finding it — 
even in a tenement house — with faces 
"pressed close to the glass." 

Yes, for such people, '' everything grows." 
Their loving skill — for I doubt if real love 
can long be ignorant — has a power of coax- 
ing which finds its way to the very heart of 
a cutting, and makes seeds yield up their 
treasures with a precisio.i and promptness 
quite distracting to ordinary mortals, — those 
easy, hopeful, blunderers who plant sweet 
peas on the top of the ground rather late, 

« 

and petunias an inch deep, rather early ; and 
comfortably bestow all their failures at the 
seed man's door. 

But real love has other skill than this; 
and can (somehow) draw gold-value from a 
purse of coppcic^, and fetch double-distilled 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. u 

pleas.ure out of a solitary plant. Did ever 
Mr. Vick's twenty acres of spring bloom 
smell as sweet, I wonder, as a single fair lit- 
tle buff hyacinth that was given me long 
ago ? when it was my only one, and not even 
the small amount of capital it represented 
could have been spent by me for such a 
luxury? Fairyland? — why that hyacinth 
shone' like Aladdin's palace, and was a new 
surprise every time we looked at it. 

Success will follow love. Didn't I beat 
Mr. Vick with his own seed two years ago, 
and raise green-edged petunias (P. margi- 
nata) that were bigger " by a handful," as 
the boys say, than the one he has put in his 
new Chromo for 1871 ? But to begin: 

January \st^ — and a bright clear day. No 
snow on the ground, no fixed ice in the river. 
Yet not much work for my hands out-of- 
doors. Roses were pruned and vines tied 
up when the leaves fell; and now I can find 
onl}' a little mending here and there. We 
have had furious winds lately, and some few 
things have broken loose ; and the covering 



12 GARDENING BY MYSELF. 

of my tulips and hyacinths is torn and rag- 
ged at the edges, with a clear hole in spots. 
They rnuot have a new spread of leaves, 
without waiting for the snow blanket which 
may not come. 

In-doors there is not much plant work 
either. A few bulbs are pushing up their 
shoots, and so are candidates for water and 
warmth ; but while I was awa}', they were 
all left in a room which grew dangerously 
cold for anything but bulbs, and of course 
they made slow progress. I should except 
my double Roman P. narcissus, which ran 
up and up as if it were trying to reach the 
sun that way. It is coming into bloom now, 
just opening out; but ran itself too much 
out of breath to recover fairly. 

Other plants crowd together on stands 
and tables or wherever they can get a place, 
waiting wearily for the spring. There are 
my seedling geraniums, a dozen or more, — 
with my especial variegated pet ; and abu- 
tilon mesopotamicum, given by one friend, 
and a pretty little nameless green vine from 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 



13 



another. Then there is a small crowd of pe- 
tunias and verbenas from last fall's cut- 
tings, — fine kinds, that I did not wish to 
lose. Then various plants struck in my sick 
room last winter, from baskets of greenhouse 
beauties brought by kind friends. French 
lavender, and a tea rose, and two or three 
specimens of Solanumjas. A wee Cape jes- 
samine too, which as it hasn't died through 
the summer, may perchance take heart 
and grow — sometime. Then there is my 
Chinese primrose. It was given to me with 
the kind wish to help fill the place of some 
frosted plants of mine ; but has never done 
itself much credit. When 1 had borne with 
this state of things for a while, I set to work 
to find out the reason ; and if Mr. Hender- 
son's directions for growing Chinese prim- 
roses could be exactly reversed, surely in 
this case they had been ! A glazed pot ; sol- 
id clay soil that would retain every new 
drop of water that ever came to it, without 
letting go oric of the old ; and large earth- 
worms enough to make one think of an In- 



14 . GARDENING BY MYSELF, 

dian juggler with his snakes. I'm not par- 
tial to earth-worms. They are one little 
drawback to the pleasure of gardening. 

The plants in general looked verj^ peaked 
when I came home ; first from being shut 
up in a cold room, but much more from being 
shut up in a hot one, where they were well 
nigh killed with kindness. I bear freezing so 
much better than roasting, myself, that I 
gave them full sympathy. Water and light 
and cool air, with a little fresh soil and clip- 
ping, have improved their appearance ; and 
as the room to which T first removed them 
is still too warm and dry with its stove-heat, 
I have devoted one window and a large 
slice of our little study to flower stands, and 
the rest retire into private life in a room 
of n<j particular temperature ; there to 
" worry through " the winter, as somebody 
(I think Mr. Henderson) calls it. 

This being the time of year which the 
cactus tribe choose for their long sleep, t 
have left my two plants of that persuasion 
on a tall cabinet in the warmest place I can 



GARDENING BY MYS'lLF. . jt 

find ; giving them no water at all, except 
just enough now and then to keep the earth 
from turning to absolute dust. 

Except among the bulbs, you cannot ex- 
pect many flowers at this season. At a tem- 
perature of less than sixty degrees, few 
house-plants will bloom ; so florists say ; 
and the rooms which come up to that in 
cold weather, are almost certain to be too 
close and dry for the plants. If buds form, 
they will probably drop off in a very disap- 
pointing way. Therefore keep your pets in 
good health, and yourselves in good pa- 
tience. When we are able to build a little 
winter addition to our Fairyland, in the 
shape of a tiny greenhouse where we can 
syringe and shower and " make a muss " to 
our heart's content, then we may hope for 
roses at midwinter. For you see then we 
can afford to get the syringe too. x\nd our 
greenhouse will not be a costly affair, with 
all the modern improvements ; but a lovely 
little bow window opening out of our sitting 
room or breakfast room. Glass on all sides ; 



1 6 * GARDENING BY MYSELF. 

glazed doors also dividing it from the room ; 
and looking if possible full to the south or 
south-east. In cold weather with the glass 
doors open, and window shutters to help at 
night, and the sun to help by day, your 
greenhouse will keep warm with little 
trouble. And as the sun gains power, 
closed doors or an open window will do all 
the regulating. And your sitting room will 
be pretty as it never was before. Neither 
would the cost be so very much. Why a 
single " switch " (of the right colour) would 
do the work ! 

Meanwhile, pending all this, give your 
plants clean faces whenever your can. If 
there is a shower bath in the house, set it 
running — not quite full on — and pass your 
plants rapidly through the fall, one by one. 
If not, draw a cloth or paper tight round 
and over the top of the pot, to keep the 
earth in, and dip each plant head first in a 
basin of clean fresh water. You can hai'd- 
ly think how either process will revive 
them. 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. ly 

And now the catalogues besfin to come 
in, — at a good time, when there is little oth- 
er work to do. What are you going to 
plant ? It is not very safe to make lists for 
other people, therefore get a good catalogue 
and choose for 3^ourself. Study too, at the 
same time with names and colours, the nature 
of your soil and climate ; for though as Edu- 
cation once said to Nature, " something may 
be t: ...J b}^ taking pains enough," yet it is 
well to know what pains will be needful. 
But especially make yourself well acquaint- 
ed with the catalogue, so as to leave no 
room for reia^rets. 

Catalogues ! Catalogues ! — what bewil- 
dering things they are ! How they do pile up 
epithets and suggestions and images ; heap- 
ing " lovel}^ blues," and '' cream 3^ whites," 
and "intense reds," and " clear yellows," and 
''rosy pinks," and " desirable contrasts," just 
to turn the heads of people who cannot get 
everything. There is a saying in the famil}^ 
that where other people read novels, 1 
study catalogues — and it is a good deal so. 

2f 



1 8 GARDENING BY M YSELF. 

But It's a matter requiring the most pro- 
fou; id study ! 

Remember, in passing, that some of these 
catalogue colours will fade, — that cannot be 
helped. What certain florists call "blue," 
you put down as " purplish, "^ — what they call 
" black," is to your eyes only invisible red. 
Especiall}^ is this true of novelties, and the 
foreign descriptions of the same ; which are 
generally got up very " regardless of ex- 
pense." 

What shall I get ? How shall I have most 
show and sweetness with the least cost "^ 
For what I can afford^ must come even be- 
fore what I want. One novelty will buy 
from five to ten old favourites : yet the nov- 
elties are so enticing ! Not the millionaire 
class — five dollars or so per seed — but those 
that are at least within sight of my purse. 
One or two of thein I must have just for 
zest and flavour. But shall I try again some 
few that have thwarted me before ? Shall I 
plant those that do not quite relish my soil 
and climate, or only the good little flowers 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. ig 

that dress for themselves under all circum- 
stances ? 

Plenty of these there must be, at all 
events. Phlox and verbenas and sweet peas 
and stocks and asters and pansies and bal- 
sams ; with mignonette everywhere, and 
sweet alyssum in spots ; and sweet scabious 
and sweet sultan for the scent of present fra- 
grance and the perfume of old times. Pop- 
pies, too, for we v/ere close friends once, 
when the}^ were taller — or I was shorter ! — 
peers in the old spring-time, frequenting the 
gravel walks together, and nearer of a 
height than we shall ever be again. And I 
find (curiously enough) that other people 
seem to have the same sort of recollections, 
only they have not been true to their early 
friendships. I have seen one and another 
stop by my poppy beds with a little cry of 
pleasure that came near being pain. 

" Oh, poppies !" they say, — and hang over 
the little red faces with a sort of tender in- 
terest which poppies in themselves have not 
often the credit of inspiring. No — they 



20 GARDENING B Y MYSELF. 

have gone out of fashion, — even the great 
double many coloured and many-named pop- 
pies ; and I doubt if one of the happy posses- 
sors of glass and gardeners would have the 
moral courage to admit a poppy upon his 
grounds, much as he may enjoy meeting the 
family at the house of a mutual friend. But 
our Fairyland has a place for everything we 
want ! 

Therefore have as many pinks as you can 
find room for; from the old, old, pink-faced, 
sv/eet-breathed, double, fringed beauties, 
that bed themselves in a mat of blue-green 
foliage, and make up for blooming but once 
a year, by being the fairest things there are 
when they bloom. From these, through 
all the v^arieties j^ou can, up to the stately 
'' Heddewigs'' and "diadems." By the way 
it is simple folly to call a pink anything but 
a pink. They're no more like * dianthus,' 
than I am like a cricket. To quote Mr. 
Weller — ' Wot's the use o' caUin' a young 
'ooman a ' wenus,' or a ' grirnn ?' " 

Get some carnation seed too, that the 



GARDENING B Y M YSELF. 2 1 

plants may be growing for next year. They 
will not bloom this. And petunias are sure 
to be useful, for they will thriv^e and be 
splendid in any season and in any place. 

Then how beautiful last year was my 
Gaillardia Josephus ! I must have it again. 
And the little blue asperula — a novelty of 
last year, as the catalogues say — was pretty 
enough, in spite of dry weather, to have an- 
other chance. Tropeolum King of the Tom 
Thumbs, and T. King Theodore, have also 
been very brilliant. I waited three years, 
1 believe, for King Theodore to come down 
within reach of my purse, but have taken 
much comfort in him since. 

Shall I give one more trial to Abronia? — • 
little witch ! — so highly recommended, so 
generally praised, but (for me) so intract- 
able ? We have been at issue for at least 
three seasons, and yet I don't like to be 
worsted! Shall I try conclusions once 
more with my favorite lupins, which (by 
way of being singular) seem not to like this 
Island of Shahweetah. Shall I be tempted 



22 GARDENING BY MYSELF 

by a lily, " well preserved for spring plant- 
ing/' while yet I know that fall is the time? 
How many tuberoses can I aftbrd? — and 
shall I indulge myself with a new gladiolus ? 
There — I have brought you into a laby- 
rinth, and can do nothing but leave you to 
find your way out; alone. 



February. 

Brilliam hopes, all woven in gorgeous tissues, 
Flaunting gaily in the golden light • 
Large desires, with most uncertain issues, 
Tender wishes, blossoming at night. 

— Longfellow. 

HAVE your seeds come ? Mine have. 
Such a dehghtful package of little 
packages .'-each full of mystery,' each rust- 
ling gently with promise. And O, what 
mystery it is ! 

Look into your little paper of " mixed 
petunia " seed,-holding your breath the 
while ; for the grains are so fine that you 
could breathe them all away, so small and 
light that they are hard to manage, with 
the best of care. There they lie in a small 
dark heap, each seed just like its fe'low 
seed to look at, yet with a whole different 
existence in each. In one is wrapped the 
glory of a full crimson flower, three inches 



24 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 



across ; in another lies perdu a blossom of 
pink, with a broad green border ; hid away 
in the next brown grain of dust is a white 
blossom, all striped and flamed w^ith purple ; 
w^hile the next will open out upon the world 
in rose-colour, with a pure white throat. One 
Avill be plain-edged, and one will be fringed ; 
one will be plain-coloured, and the next full 
of spots and veins, and the next as double 
as a rose ; and the one little grain that stays 
fast in the corner of the bag, holds, perhaps, 
some new variety, now lost to the garden- 
ing world ! 

Take a peep in among my pansy seed. 
Can you guess which little brown flat speck 
will give you " sky-blue," or '' violet," or 
the " king of the blacks " ? Can you tell 
among the phlox seed Leopoldii from Rado- 
witzii, or a '' brilliant scarlet " from a " deep 
blood purple " ? Which canna seed will 
give you a ''brilliant red " spike of flowers, 
and which a '' superb yellow?" Which of 
these portulaca seeds, looking now like 
mites of quicksilver, will open out into 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 



25 



** gold colour ? " which into " crimson ? " 
which into " white-striped ? " Each little 
grain of this dust which we call seed, has 
in itself both root and leaf and profusion of 
bloom ; and the particular mite which I 
have just brushed off from the tip of my 
finger, may be the finest " possibility " in all 
the lot I 





MAPLE SEED CUT TO SHEW 
THE FOLDED PLANT. 



PLANT TAKEN OUT. 



O never ending wonder and mystery of 
Gen. i: 10, 12! — *' Whose seed is in itself, 
after its kind." O standing "miracle of 
flowers and trees !" — so perfect as to be 
" very good " in the eyes of the Lord him- 
self," — it will never cease to be marvellous 
in our eyes. 

Now what will you do with these little 

packets of wonders? To begin with, go 

over your list, catalogue in hand, to note 

carefully which kinds of seed must be sown 

3 



26 GARDENING B Y MYSELF. 

in the house, and which must be left for the 
open border ; as well as those that may be 




MAPLE, •WITH SEED LEAVES 
UltrOLDED. 




MAPLE, SHEWINa THE FIRST 
PAIK OF LEAVES. 



planted there, if it is more convenient. For 
some flowers need transplanting-, and some 
will not like it ; and some, if they are not 
sown early, will take a year to bloom. Sep- 
arate your seeds first according- to this 
rule. Then from the house-set, take out the 
hardiest, and let them have attention first ; 
because very tender things must be set out 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 



27 



SO late, that they need not be sown very 
early. Except canna, and datura, and a 
few others of which the catalogue will tell 
you, that are shy of blooming the first 
year, and so must be got in as early as pos- 
sible. 

First of all, then, put your canna seeds in 
scalding water, and leave them in a hot 
place (not boiling) for twelve hours or so, 
while you attend to other matters. 

What soil have you got for planting ? If 
you made no preparation last fall, you cannot 
have " rotted sods," nor some other excel- 
lent things that need time and care to make 
them good ; j^et if you live in the country, 
the want can be easily made up. In town, 
the shortest way is to buy sixpence worth 
of prepared soil at the nearest greenhouse. 
In the country, take basket and trowel and 
go off to the woods — deciduous woods, not 
evergreen, if you have the choice — and 
there pry into the little hollows, among 
rocks and tree-roots. Scrape off last year's 
leaves which lie on top, and the leaves of 



28 GARDENING BY M YSELF. 

the year before, and the year before that, 
which come next ; and when you have thus 
disposed of several withered generations, 
you will come to a little black, fresh, per- 
fectly-decayed mould. Not much in a 
place, perhaps, but the places are many ; 
and there is nothing, with me, that has 
proved so good for the growth of seeds, as 
this same leaf mould from the woods. You 
may use it alone, or with a mingling of 
common earth, or a little sand. 

Having got the soil, the next thing is 
what to put it in. What is to hold your 
little seed beds in the house ? All the 
florists, without exception, I believe, say : 
" Never use pots." And I only answer such 
high authority with the old words : " When 
you can't do as you would, you must do as 
you can." Little seed boxes, sawed in two 
at a four-inch depth, are capital ; and soap 
boxes with the like treatment, are first-rate. 
But it is not ever}^ lover of flowers that has 
strength and time to cut up old boxes or 
make the new. It is not every masculine 



GARDENING BY MYSELF, 



29 



head of a family that will give his strength 
and time to "• trumpery." And seeds will 
grow, and grow well, in flower-pots, if only 
they have the right sort of care. Earthen 
seed-pans (a kind of broad, shallow flower- 
pot) are, I think, on the whole, about the 
best thing I ever used, — light and manage- 
able, and large enough not to let the earth 
dry too fast. And there is a great system 
of indemnity in this world. Soap boxes are 
good, no doubt, Mr. Henderson ; but if they 
have to be carried about from window to 
window and room to room, to catch the 
sun or follow the fire, then, you see, there 
is a qualification to their excellence. 

Well, take the best you can get, — then 
prepare your mould by sifting. And as 
you and I have not always a nest of riddles 
at hand, let me tell you that a twenty-five 
cent wire ladle will do extremely well for 
the first rough sifting ; while a small wire 
sieve, for the like extravagant price, will fin- 
ish up the work in a quite superior manner. 
Even a cinder sifter can be made to help. 



30 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 



Fill your boxes or pots about half full of 
the rough siftiug that remain in the sieve, 
and then fill to within an inch of the top 
with the finest of the mould ; shake the pots 
lightly, smooth down the mould with a light 
pressure, and sow your seeds. 

Now in all gardening matters one must 
use plenty of common sense. You will see 
at a glance, if you think as well as look, that 
all seeds must not be planted alike. Some 
are large, like canna and balsams and thun- 
bugia, and need to be down in the ground 
a half inch or more. Then others, smaller 
or lighter, like verbenas, must have less 
covering ; and when you get to the little 
dust-seeds — petunias and poppies and por- 
tulacca — make the surface of the earth very 
smooth, scatter the seeds over, and press 
them gently down. That is covering 
enough. The soil should be damp, but 
not wet, when you sow seeds ; and after 
sowing it is good to give the whole a gentle 
sprinkhng, and then to cover the pots with 
an old pane of glass if you have one at 



GARDENING BY M YSELF. 3 x 

leisure. If not, a folded newspaper will do 
very well, and keep the seeds from drying 
too fast, before they have a chance to start. 
Much watering for the first few days is apt 
to wash the smaller seeds out of place and 
out of sight. Take notice, too, in your 
planting, that all thin, flat seeds, — such as 
stocks, for instance, — need less covering of 
earth than those which are round and hard. 
Keep your pots and boxes in a warm room, 
but not too hot, where the seeds will have 
gentle forcing ; only the cannas may be set 
in the warmest place you can find. On the 
water kettle of a stove is very good. 

If there is verbena seed among your pack- 
ages, that must have fresh soil. Whatever 
the others can put up with, give the ver- 
benas what they want. Not earth taken 
from a garden, in which whole races of 
plants have lived and died for years ; but 
earth from the woods, or the crumbly 
mould of decayed sods, or scrapings from 
the rich spots and corners of a pasture-land. 
The under surface of each new sod you can 



22 GARDENING BY MYSELF. 

take up, has a very little that is very good. 
Such new *' stuff," as the gardeners call it, is 
best for all seeds, but indispensable for verbe- 
nas. Dexter Snow, of Chicopee — great au- 
thority on verbenas — says there is no use in 
trying to grow them in old soil ; and my 
experience certainly bears him out. The 
seeds will not start well ; the plants will 
not be strong ; and the bed of bloom which 
you ought to have from each verbena will 
resolve itself into a poor, scraggy, strag- 
gling plant, a burden to itself and to every- 
body that sees it. 

Have fresh soil for your verbenas. And 
even when you set them out in the garden — 
unless you can dig up new beds for them 
every year — take out a few spadefuls of 
earth from the old bed where a plant is to 
go, and fill in with new, rich stuff from the 
woods or the pasture. 

Most people, I think, choose rather to buy 
the plants than the seed ; and to be absolute- 
ly j-^^r^ of fine varieties, and special varieties, 
that is of course the best way. So, also, if 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 



33 



you want whole beds of white or purple or 
crimson. And it is quite true that young 
verbenas are much given to "■ miffs " and 
freaks, and do not always consider existence 
worth striving for. But they are very inter- 
esting seedlings to me, because they " sport " 
so freely ; and I never know just what I 
shall have, and enjoy all the pleasure of ex- 
pectation and novelty and surprise. I said 
they were of uncertain disposition, but that 
is only while they are in the seed-leaf. Once 
started in the world with a pair of rough 
leaves, and verbenas will defy most things. 
Before that, you must watch them a little. 
Sometimes the young plant comes up with 
the old seed for a head-piece, — not carried 
loosely, bean-fashion, but worn with a ver}^ 
tight fit ; and then (perhaps because the air of 
the room is too dry) the seed maintains its 
hold, and keeps the leaves in prison. If 
this lasts dangerously long (don't wait till 
the little plant begins to hang its heavy 
head), take small sharp scissors and clip 
off the tip end of the seed, steadying the 



34 GARDENING BY M YSELF, 

plant all the while with a spare finger. Gen- 
erally then, with a break once made, the 
leaves muster strength and finish the work, 
and the plant is not a bit the worse. The 
seed-leaves will be a little nipped at the 
ends, but the true leaves will be quite unhurt ; 
unless indeed you have clipped too close. 

People who sow a dozen packets of seed 
will smile at my directions : people who 
sow but one will understand. 

Keep your seed-pans moist, but not wet. 
" Sprinkle every day," Mr. Henderson 
says, — but sprinkle cautiously. Do you 
know how ? It is an easy matter if you 
have all appliances, — a " sprinkler," or 
''syringe," with all the modern improve- 
ments. But a brass syringe is costly, and I 
never saw a tin one yet that was worth 
house room. You must educate your fin- 
gers. For no " mist " will go up out of 
the ground for your flowers as it did for 
Eve's, — you must imitate her Fairyland as 
best you may. I have watered a great 
many little seed-beds from the ends of my 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 35; 

fingers, letting the drops glide softly ofif, 
and holding my fingers quite close to the 
soil ; for if the drops fall from too great a 
height they pack and harden it. If the 
seeds are large, and not easily disturbed, 
hold your left hand close over the pot, hol- 
low it slightly, and pour the water slowly in 
there ; letting it trickle softly down between 
the closed fingers. Another expedient (of 
a professed gardener, this time) is to take 
a clean paint brush, dip it in water, and 
draw it through your hand in such a fashion 
that the drops fall in a shower of fine spray. 
But this needs practice. 

In the intervals of seed business, look 
over your potted plants ; for they will begin 
to wake up now, thinking of new leaves, and 
possible blossoms : therefore give them all 
the encouragement you can. Nip ofif the 
leaves that are faded, prune in unruly 
shoots, see if any need re-potting. For 
when the old pot is getting crowded with 
roots, it is then best to move. But let 
the change be always to a pot just one size 



36 GARDENING BY MYSELF. 

larger. When there is no need of repotting, 
turn off some of the top soil, and fill up with 
new ; and this needs no fine sifting. The 
plants may have more water too, as the 
spring draws on ; and all the sunshine that 
can be had. 

How softly the season advances now ! — 
how exquisite is the unbending of nature ! — 
Even with ice and snow still in sight, there 
is a change in the whole look of the world. 
The light is different, and more tender ; the 
clouds roll up in softer lines ; and even in 
the wind — cold as it is yet — there comes 
the strange wild scent of swelling buds. 
And the phoebes chant softly to each other ; 
and the sun sends warm persuasive glances 
to which even the soberest heart must yield. 

Every day I set my plants out in our lit- 
tle glazed piazza for a taste of early sum- 
mer ; and stand there myself, to watch 
them. How they love the sun ! — seeming 
to yearn towards it ; even as I, last winter, 
in my sunless sick room, used to lay my 
face close against the window frame, to 



GARDENING BY MYSELF, 37 

catch — s antwise — one little ray of the bless- 
ed sunshine. 

Even so my plants lean towards the light, 
stretching forth their hands to grasp it and 
bring it home. 

Do you see ? — it is their life, their joy, 
their rest. The pale leaves take strength 
and colour, the drooping buds lift up their 
heads ; the new shoots spring forth to grow. 

" I don't know " — said a poor Scotch girl, 
when the Session before whom she was 
examined doubted whether she *' knew 
enough " to join the church ; '' I can't tell 
about that. May be I don't know enough. 
But as a flower turns to the sun, so niy 
heart turns to the Lord Jesus." 



MARCH. 

Daffy-downjJilly came up in the cold, 

Through the brown mould, 
Although the March breezes blew keen on her face, 
Although the white snow lay in many a place. 

DafFy-down-dilly had heard under ground 

The sweet rushing sound 
Of the streams, as they burst off their white winter chains, — • 
Of the whistling Spring winds and the pattering rains. 

" Now then," thought DafFy, deep down in her heart, 

" It's time I should start !" 
So she pushed her soft leaves through the hard frozen 

ground. 
Quite up to the surface, and there she looked round. 

There was snow all about her, — grey clouds overhead, — 

Th i trees all looked dead. 
Then how do you think Daffy-down-dilly felt, 
When the sun would not shine and the ice would not melt ? 

" Cold weather '" thought DafF}'-, still working away : 

" The earth's hard to-day ! 
There's but a half inch of my leaves to be seen. 
And two-thirds of that is more yellow than green !" 

(38) 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. ^ 30 

" I can't do much yet — but I'll do what I can. 

It's well I began ! 
For unless I can manage to lift up my head, 
The people will think that the Spring herself s dead.* 

So, little by little, she brought her leaves out. 

All clustered about ; 
And then her bright flowers began to unfold. 
Till Daffy stood robed in her Spring green and gold. 

O Duffy-down-dilly ! so brave and so true ! 

I wish all were like you ! 
So ready for duty in all sorts of weather. 
And holding forth courage and beauty together. 



I LIKE to begin early, even with the out- 
of-door work. Using- caution of course, 
and judgment ; but still following close on 
the retiring footsteps of the snow, and dis- 
puting the ground inch by inch with the 
frost. Pleasure is gained, if nothing else. 

Of course regular digging while the earth 
is wet and cold, will be of little use, — if you 
dig it now, it \vill just dry in lumps and 
clods that will give you endless trouble. It 
is very heavy work, besides. But you can 
i-ake and dress and " fuss," to your heart's 
content, — transplanting and arranging and 



40 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 



considering ; and if the digging waits a lit- 
tle, the hardy perennials will have their 
heads above ground, and so miss the chance 
of being decapitated by your spade ; and 
many self-sown annuals will spring up, 
ready to your hand for transplanting. And 
besides, — a matter of much importance 
where you do your own digging, — the la- 
bour will be not half, if the ground is dry 
and crumbly and friable : if it works well, as 
experts say. 

Do you do your own digging ? — and do 
you know how ? It is such pretty work ! — 
and by no means so tiresome as hoeing. 




SET OF ladies' GARDEN TOOLS. 



A light Spade is the first essential, — sharp 
and bright and clean from all soil of the last 



GARDENING BY M YSELF. 4 1 

digging". Then ground in good condition : 
then, patience to do very little at a time, till 
you get used to the work. If you fail to use 
this last little tool, the chance is that you 
will lay yourself up with a lame back and 
an extreme disgust for digging. But it will 
be your fault, not the spade's. You can 
lame yourself just as thoroughly with a too- 
long first ride on horseback, or pull in the 
boat. 

Having then all essentials, begin joyous- 
ly ! — with the scent of the fresh grass and 
the fresh earth circling all round you, and 
blue birds charming your eyes, and song 
sparrows cheering you on. And if you can 
persuade one of those useful articles called 
men to go round each flower bed with a 
stronger foot and spade, trimming the grass 
edging where it has encroached, before you 
begin, your work will be all the easier. 

The first rule seems very simple. Begin 
at one end. Or if the bed is round and end- 
less, begin at one side. And when you have 
begun, go steadily on, in that line. Did you 
4'' 



42 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 



ever see a woman begin to scrub in the 
middle of the floor, or at the door of exit ? 
Very well : dont do that : you must not 
walk over the ground you have dug. 

Begin at one end, — and open a narrow 
furrow quite across the bed, taking out the 
earth and conveying it quite to the other 
end. If the bed is but small, a strong, skill- 
ed hand can easily throw the earth there at 
once, spadeful by spadeful; but it needs 
strength ; and so Mrs. Loudon says, that a 
light wheelbarrow is the best means of trans- 
port. And I should say that too ; but I tried 
so long in vain to get a light wheelbarrow 
myself, that I am afraid to call it an essen- 
tial. A basket will do instead. 




ladies' wheelbarrow. 



The furrow once opened, dig across the 
line of earth that comes next to it, taking 



GARDENING B V MYSELF. 43 

moderate spadefuls, but going down as 
deep as you can ; and turn each spadeful of 
earth quite upside down into the empty 
furrow. Go regularly on in this way, till 
the whole bed is finished, being careful to 
break and mix the earth well as you go, 
and also to pick out any large stones. Com- 
mon weeds and rubbish may be buried at 
the bottom of your furrows ; but pull out 
all the sorrel, root and branch. T/iat will 
grow, sideways and endways and all ways ; 
and from almost a foot deep. 

If the bed is small, you need not begin to 
rake till it is all dug ; but in a large bed, 
the best way is to rake from time to time, as 
soon as you have ready a strip of two or 
three feet wide. Hold the handle of the 
rake high, and use it lightly ; breaking 
lumps and bringing all the surface to a fine 
crumbly state. Let the centre of the bed 
be a little higher than the sides (more or 
less, according to your soil) and be careful 
to leave no small hills and valleys as you 
g-o. If the ground needs manure, that must 



44 GARDENING B Y MYSELF. 

be spread evenly over the bed before you 
begin the digging ; and no manure should be 
used, of any kind, that is not well decayed 
and in a dry, crumbly state that will let it 
mix easily with the mould. 

If you want to draw earth from one part 
of the bed to another with your rake, then 
hold the handle low. 

To go back to our verbenas. As soon as 
you see the plants fairly up, give them plen- 
ty of light and sunshine ; else they will run 
up slim and tall like a boy that has out- 
grown his strength ; and be what the gar- 
deners call "■ drawn." And as soon as the 
first little rough leaves begin to appear, pot 
the seedlings off singly in very small pots — 
the smaller the better. All house seedlinsrs 
should be treated in the same way, if you 
have small pots enough. If not, then use a 
larger size, and put three plants in each ; 
setting them round the edge at even dis- 
tances apart. Then when they are to be set 
in the open ground, turn out the whole ball 
of earth into your hand, and neatly break 



GA RDENING BY M YSELF. 45 

it into three, having a plant in each. It 
you are careful, the roots will be almost as 
little disturbed as if each seedling had its 
own pot. And by the way, in choosing 
small pots for this work, get those that 
are narrow and deep rather than broad, 
— roots need most room in that direc- 
tion. 

Suppose only one plant in the seed pan is 
ready for transplanting, — some small gera- 
nium or verbena that has pushed on ahead 
of its fellows. Then take a very small kitch- 
en teaspoon, or a narrow flat bit of stick, a 
little sharpened at one end, and carefully 
dig up the plant that is ready. If you put 
your stick well down to the bottom of the 
seed pan, you can take up a seedling with 
all the earth that fairly belongs to it, and 
make no disturbance that can matter to the 
other plants. Have a small clean pot at 
hand, with a potsherd over the hole and a 
little earth on that r set stick and plant gen- 
tly down in the middle ; and without remov- 
ing the stick put in earth enough to hold up 



46 GARDENING B Y MYSELF, 

the plant. Draw out your stick gently, fill 
up the pot to within a half inch of the top, 
strike it lightly on the table to " firm " the 
earth, water slowly and moderately ; and 
then if the earth has sunk away too much, 
add more. Keep your seedling for a few 
days " warm and close/* the florists say, un- 
til it is '' established ;" then give it plenty of 
sunshine, and air by degrees, turning your 
plant often, lest it should not be " of a round 
mind." And do not forget to fill up the hole 
in the seed-pan bed, with a spoonful of fresh 
earth. 

In all my talk about plants in pots, I be- 
lieve I have said nothing of the insects 
which sometimes trouble them, — partly, in- 
deed, because I almost forgot their exist- 
ence. In our cool, fresh rooms, with open 
fires and plenty of air, the plants enjo}^ 
themselves much better than the insects ; 
and I rarely see one. But in close, stove- 
heated houses, the advantage is all the oth- 
er way. 

Almost everybody who has had a few roses 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. ^y 

or geraniums to care for, has made acquain- 
tance at some time or other with the deli- 
cate, pretty, mischievous little green fly, or 
aphis. Probably most have seen (on their 
own plants or other people's) a tender rose 
shoot, a sweet geranium leaf, so covered 
with these little interlopers as to be simply 
disgusting. And though hand-picking may 
have made a clearance for the time, yet the 
ranks were always filled and refilled, in ex- 
haustless measure. Quietly sapping the juices 
of your plants, and spoiling the look of all 
that they did not eat, so you have seen 
them. Well, for your comfort and encour- 
agement, Mr. Henderson says that this 
small mischief-maker should never be seen. 
Of course it follows that he need not. The 
best greenhouse preventive seems to be 
thorough fumigation ; — one speck of sense 
the aphis has in its small head — it does not 
like tobacco. Smoke your little greenhouse 
two or three times a week ; and when you 
can stand the smell long enough yourself to 
go and look, you will find that the aphis 



48 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 



tribe have disappeared — or not appeared — 
as the case may be. 

A sweeter, easier remedy for those who 
live in their greenhouse, is pure cold water. 
A vigorous shower bath, at short intervals, 
is the best thing I ever tried. 

Worse than the green aphis, but not so 
well-known, is the red spider. A minute 
speck of scarlet, — too small to be noticed, 
but working infinite harm. You can trace 
them by their work ; for after their feeding, 
the plant leaves turn brown as if they had 
been slightly scorched. I lost almost a 
whole set of fine seedling calceolarias once 
in that way, before I ever guessed what was 
the matter. Water is the great remedy 
here, — showering, syringing, washing the 
leaves ; whatever you can do best ; and re- 
member that the hotter and dryer the air 
where you keep your plants, the more 
danger they are in from red spider. 

The verbena mite, or '' rust " — another 
creature known chiefly by its work, is be- 
yond the reach of most remedies, bedding 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 



49 



itself in the very substance of the leaf. The 
best preventive is to keep your plants in 
vigorous growth. 

'' I had a lot of about 500 heliotropes," 
says Mr. Henderson, ** growing in two-inch 
pots; one half of which were, in September, 
shifted into three-inch pots. They were 
kept side b}^ side, and treated in all respects 
the same. • Those shifted, of course, wuth 
increased food, grew vigorously and strong, 
while the unshifted remained comparatively 
stunted; and to-day, Dec. ist, the 'black 
rust ' shows itself on nearly every plant, and 
the microscope shows on every affected 
leaf hundreds of these insects, feeding 
like sheep on a pasture field, while on 
the shifted plants none whatever can be 
found."^- 

Keep growing, — is safe counsel for your 
plants as well as yourself. 

Mealy bug needs no description. You 
may never see him, — if you do, pick him off 
If he will stay, give him a dose of whale-oil 

* Practical Floriculture. 



50 GARDENING BY MYSELF. 

soapsuds. Though this is not very safe for 
very tender plants. 

If there is an oleander in your collection, 
you may find the scale insect on some of the 
stems. It is ugl}^, but not very harmful, — 
hand-picking and washing the stems with 
soapsuds are the best cure. 

Meantime, with all this house care, do not 
forget your sweet peas out-of-doors. Plant 
them as soon as the ground will work. 
Frost in the air won't hurt them. It is a 
good way to set whatever support they are 
to have, before planting. Make sure that 
the stick or trellis is in firm and upright ; 
then plant your peas, pretty thick, and not 
a bit less than four inches deep. Never 
fear, they'll come up ; and their roots will 
be beyond the reach of summer heats. 

Some other things should be sown as ear- 
ly as possible in the open ground, — candy- 
tuft, larkspur, poppies, mignonnette, lupins, 
sweet alyssum, clarkia, and such hardy an- 
nuals. Directions say, put them at once 
where they are to remain, as most of these 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 



51 



dislike transplanting ; and they do certainly 
need extra care. But I think I have trans- 
planted every one of those named above, and 
had them do well. One of the first things I 
do in the spring, when the ground is clear- 
ed and softened, is to examine my flower 
beds very closely, to find out any stray 
seedlings that may have come up, and to 
move them to prepared quarters. Of 
course this examination must be before the 
ground is stirred. 

Dig the place for these, or for seeds, not 
when it is wet ; making it fine and soft ; 
stake out a charmed circle a foot or so broad 
with neat slender sticks ; and there sow 
your seeds — not too deep. Be careful to 
cover them according to the size of the 
seeds — sweet peas are the only exception ; 
and let the covering be too shallow rather 
than too deep. Seeds covered too lightly 
may come up (so says Mrs. Loudon) by dint 
of very favourable weather ; but seeds cov- 
ered too deep never can. Press down the 
earth gently the first thing, and the last 



52 GARDENING BY MYSELF, 

thing ; and stick a label in the middle or at 
one side of the patch. Else you may get 
two sets of poppies " cheek by jowl," and 
red, white, and blue, in anything but har- 
monious confusion. Some gardeners say it 
is well to cover the seed patch for a few 
days with a bit of board or an empty flower 
pot. It may be, — I have never tried it. 
But remeniber neither to dig nor sow nor 
transplant just after a heavy rain. The 
earth will dry in clods, and give you great 
trouble. 

Some time this month you must uncover 
your bulbs. The middle of March is gener- 
ally my time ; but that must vary a little 
with season and place. Let no careless hand 
touch the beds ; for the shoots are many of 
them well up by this time, and the brush and 
leaves must be taken off very gently. Then 
dress the surface of the earth with light 
trowel work, so as to loosen and smooth 
and put the whole in neat order; being 
very careful not to injure the shoots that 
are not yet up. Give rehef to the tulips 



GARDENING BY M YSELF. 5 3 

that have come up with a dry leaf round 
their necks, and tighten any labels that the 
frost has thrown out. You need not be 
uneasy because the shoots look yellow in- 
stead of green ; they will take their right 
colour when they have had a little sunshine 
and fresh air. And the night frosts will not 
hurt them, nor even a spring snow. Dress 
the ground and leave them alone, until 
their heads of bloom need tying up. 



APRIL. 

Do you know what Spring is doing? 
Little children, do you know 
She has carried off the icicles, 
And swept away the snow ? 
The soft air comes to fan her, 
And the birch hangs out his banner, 
And the squirrel-cup peeps boldly from his brown leaf 
bed below. 

IF there is a month in the year when 
everything wants doing at once, and 
nothing is willing to wait, I suppose it is 
this same rainbow month of April. Every 
individual seed and plant is in a hurry, and 
you must have a good deal of self-control to 
escape the breathless contagion ; for with 
your pets on the jump, how shall you give 
them slow and quiet attention ? Yet the)^ 
need it, — need shading and repressing some- 
times ; for it will not do for them to get 
ahead of the season. The storm-nursed lit- 

(54) 



GARDENING B Y M YSELF. 5 5 

tie candytufts and alyssums that have come 
up out-of-doors on their own responsibilit3% 
will fight the frost and live it through ; but 
your thin-skinned house seedlings are quite 
another matter. Their tissues are delicate 
with warmth and petting ; and unless they 
are hardened off before they are set out, the 
hardening process will prove fatal. You re- 
member the little girl who went to school 
with the tears freezing on her cheeks and 
her mittens in her pocket. Being asked the 
cause of this arrangement, she replied that 
she '' wanted to be tough." Well — )^ou 
must "toughen" 3^our plants more gently 
than that. When they are well up, set the 
seed-box further from the stove ; and w' hen 
the potted seedlings are well established, 
give them cooler air, and more of it, from 
day to day, that they may be ready to brave 
the outer world. 

Do you know, unscientific people who 
love flowers, how it is that your pets freeze 
to death ? It was a delightful discovery to 
me, when I first understood it. Each plant, 



56 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 



and each part of a plant, you must remem- 
ber, is made up of minute little cells, separ- 
ated by only a wall of thin tissue. As the 
plant grows, the cells expand to their full 
size, and then divide themselves in two by 
throwing across from side to side a new lit- 
tle wall of tissue. In its turn each half of 
the divided cell stretches out to full pro- 
portions and. divides again ; and so the pro- 
cess goes on. Now these cells are not emp- 




SECTION OP MAPLE ROOT TO SHOW THE CELLS. 

ty, but are full of a thin sort of mucilage, 
with often a little nucleus of matter still 
more solid. If then, the cold is intense 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 



57 



enough to freeze this mucilage, it swells out, 
of course, as you know liquids do in freez- 
ing, and bursts through the thin walls of the 
cell. And if this once happens, the plant — or 
that part of it — is dead beyond recovery. But 
hardy plants have stronger tissues, and the 
frost does them no harm ; except perhaps 
to a new shoot here and there which we 
call "imperfectly ripened," — not having yet 
attained the full thickness of its tissues. Do 
you see now, how if your seedlings are sent 
straight from the stove to the garden, their 
tissues are too tender to stand anything? 
Whereas, by careful hardening, the walls of 
the cells will have grown thick and strong, 
and the plants may be set out with little 
danger. 

A grave question comes up in many minds 
at this time of year, as to the best arrange- 
ment of flower beds, — a nice question, too ; 
having much to do with the results so gleeful- 
ly expected fjom our little packets of seed. 
Yet I do not want to give much real advice 
on the subject. It is well enough to study 



58 GARDENING BY MYSELF, 

plans and designs, if you like ; but then de- 
cide quite independently, and do not be 
driven or lured from your' own choice and 
taste by any such words as " old-fashioned " 
or '' indispensable ;" else you may find your- 
self, like poor Rosamond, digging a pond 
which will be " quite full and verj^ useful " 
in rainy weather only. Use your judgment 
and common sense, — they are Taste's two 
best under-gardeners. The arrangement 
which is very fine for one piece of ground, 
suiting its size and characteristics, may be 
quite lost in another; and figures which 
make a beautiful mosaic in skilful hands, 
are often mere disorder and confusion, 
where want of practice or want of time 
leaves them to their own devices, untrim- 
med and uncared for. Therefore, study 
your time first of all, and choose no plan 
which will require more of that than you 
can give. 

If you are unlimited in this respect ; if 
you have an eye for colour as well as form ; 
if neither your pains nor your patience are 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 59 

likely to give out ; then you may have a 
\Qry splendid show vv^ith a geometric flower 
garden, — where all the beds are laid out in 
exact shapes, and with a certain reference to 
each other ; the whole forming a pattern of 
coloured embroidery upon the green turf. 
In this case each bed must be filled with a 
single colour and a single kind of flower, 
the compact, close-growing sorts being 
chosen, and those which are of constant and 
abundant bloom. A mere border line of a 
different colour is admissible round each 
bed ; but it will not make the figure so full 
and perfect as where simple masses of col- 
our are used. For full effect, such a garden 
should be on ground a little lower than the 
house, so that the whole may be seen to- 
gether. One of the finest situations I ever 
saw, was where the house stood on an up- 
springing rise of ground ; and quite at the 
foot, a little to one side but all in sight, lay 
the garden. 

Geometric beds need to be very carefully 
planned and marked out, before a thing is 



60 GARDENING BY M YSELF. 

planted ; and they always show best with 
grass between, — "- laid down in turf," as the 
books say : though of course box or other 
edgings may be used, and the walks made 
of gravel. But whatever divides the beds 
must be kept in the most precise order. So 
must the flowers themselves. Plant or sow 
them rather thicker than needful, at first, 
and then thin out from time to time, so as 
to have strong, hardy plants, that will cover 
the whole ground. Then, as they grow, 
keep them rigourously within bounds ; clip 
and train and fasten back, and let nothing 
stray over the limits by even so much as a 
bud. A geometric flower garden must have 
military line-and-rule precision ; neither vis- 
iting nor " followers " can be allowed ; and 
the pretty wandering blossoms that go 
roaming about with such fair effect in other 
places, have no business here. Neither must 
you let plants have entirely their own up- 
and-down way, — prune the aspiring shoots ot 
geraniums, and keep everything close and 
bushy and at home. Keep watch also of 



GA RDENING BY M YSELF, 6 1 

your edgings, lest they encroach in irregu- 
lar fashion here and there, and so spoil your 
pattern. Choose and sort your colours care- 
fully, giving heed to the contrasts. Mrs. 
Loudon advises that the design be first 
drawn and coloured on paper, where alter- 
ations are easy. And then throughout the 
season see that your beds have not only 
care and clipping, but also water — from 
your hands, if the clouds fail ; lest brown 
plants and empty beds take the place of 
bright patches of colour. This it is, more 
than anything else perhaps, which makes 
geometric flower gardens such a success 
in England and (so often) such a failure 
here : the English climate is so much more 
favourable. 

To say truth, I never saw any " bedding " 
system in our climate amount to much more 
than beds of tinted green ; and I never even 
guessed how superb it might be, till an En- 
glish lady showed me a water-colour sketch 
of a certain English country house. Quiet 
and brown itself, the house had for a fore^ 
6 



62 GARDENING BY MYSELF. 

ground a lawn of living velvet, and, upon 
that, flower-beds that were like spots of 
flame or bits of sky, — mere miracles of colour. 

"And then the turf" — remarked our 
hostess, — '' it is not all climate ; but the turf 
has been mowed and rolled and watered, 
and mowed and rolled and watered, for a 
hundred years !" 

Another plan in great favour now, is to 
ribband everything, — the flowers being set 
in even lines along or around the bed, sort 
be3^ond sort, and colour beyond colour. 
The beds may be of any size or shape ; but 
the plants should vary in height, rising slow- 
ly from the outer edge to the centre or the 
back. Let the trailers be at the very front, — 
the li/.tle four-inch or six-inch beauties ; then 
the eight and twelve-inch ; and so on back to 
two, three, and four feet — or eight feet — if 
you choose. Be careful of your colours here 
also, and plant only free and constant bloom- 
ers; for you cannot easily get in among the 
lines to replace one sort with another. 

If you have plenty of room on your lawn, 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 63 

if your lawn is kept always close-shaven, 
then small beds here and there upon it, filled 
with one single colour each, are very fair to 
see. But do not be persuaded to waste your 
roses in beds. I never saw a rose-bed yet 
that had half the beauty of a single fine 
specimen " left blooming alone," either in 
among other and lower flowers, or in a lit- 
tle dug-out patch by itself. 

To mark out these simple beds you need 
only a long cord with a pointed stick tied to 
each end. Set one stick firm in the ground, 
where the centre of the bed should be, and 
with the other trace your circle. Then stake 
it well and evenly, ready for cutting in the 
turf, or edging in the open ground. To 
make an exact oval, set both sticks in line, a 
little nearer together than the proposed 
length of the bed ; wind up the cord until it 
is J2ist that length ; and then with a third 
stick draw out the cord as far as it will 
reach on all sides, marking as you go, till 
you come round to the point where you 
began. 



64 GARDENING BY MYSELF. 

And now what shall I say about the old- 
fashioned garden? — much talked against, 
much laughed at, by most people who have 
*' facilities." Yet for those who have not, it 
after all often the best ; needing less time, 
less skill, less knowledge of form and colour ; 
and giving results that are sweet at least, if 
iiey are not wonderful. Few directions are 
called for here. Fair, rich confusion is all the 
aim of an old-fashioned flower garden, and 
the greater the confusion, the richer. You 
want to come upon mignonnette in unexpect- 
ed places, and to find sprays of heliotrope 
in close consultation with your roses, and 
geraniums sporting their uniforms like gay 
recruits off duty. Sweet peas bow to phlox- 
es here, and the gladiolus straightens itself 
with harmless pride among its more pliant 
companions, and the little white sweet alys- 
sum goes visiting all the day. There is the 
most exquisite propriety and good fellow- 
ship, with an utter absence of ''deport- 
ment;" and the perennials that pass out of 
flower are kindly hid and merged by their 



GARDENING BY M YSELF. 6 5 

blooming neighbors, till their time of glory 
comes round again. And if a sedate mem- 
ber of the Balm family shows its red head in 
a corner, or a tall bush cranberry peeps over 
the fence to display its strings of coral : even 
if an old Corchorus surveys the beauties of 
to-day, and gravely discourses of 

" The times that used to was," — 

nobody is shocked, and the old bush is not 
disturbed. No stiffness, no ceremony, — flow- 
ers, and not a garden, — this is the beauty of 
the old style ; yet even here taste and judg- 
ment will find work. 

For instance, you will not shadow your 
lively little verbenas with the stately growth 
of a tall ricinus ; nor force the tea roses to 
keep house near the marigolds. You will 
not suffer a weed anywhere. Give the 
small things a chance to be seen, and let 
distance heighten the enchantment of those 
that are tall and tree-like. Scatter your 
colours broadcast indeed, and yet with a 
certain thought and method; have plenty 
6^ 



^S GARDENING BY MYSELF. 

of tufts of pure green, such as rose gera- 
niums and the flowering grasses, with here 
and there a red achyranthes or mottled col- 
eus to catch and hold the sun : and let 
fragrance abound everywhere. For this is 
much of the charm of the old garden, — not 
trim shapes, and inlaid figures, and gor- 
geous masses of colour ; but rich, soft, min- 
gled bloom, and tender tints, and wafts of 
nameless sweetness to every passer-by. 

However vour beds are laid out, however 
your flowers are distributed, remember to 
use great care in preparing the soil and 
putting in the seed. Then, when the seeds 
are in, use patience. For some will be slow 
to come up, taking a long while to awaken 
out of their brown sleep ; and some will 
come up in a thin scattering fashion ; be- 
cause certain flowers ripen their seed un- 
equally, and always give a large percentage 
of husks. Perhaps a few kinds will not come 
up at all. You may have covered them too 
deep ; or a cold storm may have caught the 
little seedlings in the first moments of 



GARDENING BY M YSELF. 6/ 

their growth, and chilled them past recov- 
ery ; or some unseen host of insect marau- 
ders may have quartered on them for a 
night, choosing your flower bed before all 
the world. Such things must happen now 
and then, and the best regulated families 
suffer. 

It is good to reserve a little seed of va- 
rious kinds — especially the smaller and 
more delicate — for a second planting in 
such emergencies : sometimes, too, one can 
fill the vacant places with the thinnings of 
another patch. Yet do not be in a hurry to 
conclude that the first planting has failed ; 
because, as I said, some seeds must have 
time ; and those wiry little things that 
hurry up as if they had slept all winter 
with one eye open, may mislead you con- 
cerning the rest. But however things go, 
take Mr. Vick's advice, and count the seeds 
that grow rather than those that fail, — let- 
ting no lament for what you have not, spoil 
the sweetness of what you have. 

We had an old gardener once who had a 



68 GARDENING BY MYSELF. 

dexterous way of running his finger down 
into the flower pot or seed patch to see if 
the seeds were '' coming ;" but it is a bad 
plan for people of less experience. Let the 
seeds wait their time, — wait too, it may be, 
for clear sunshine or a shower of rain, — and 
Ihen before you know it they will be up ; 
Bome sooner, some later, each after its kind. 
I tried a new way with my canna seeds 
this year, to find out whether they were 
coming up. They had steamed away on the 
top of the stove-kettle so long, that I began 
to have doubts on the subject, and resolved 
one day to try a change of stimulus and 
give them a little sunshine. So I took up 
the pot, carried it safely across one room, 
and dropped it full in the middle of the next ! 
then looked about me in some dismay. For 
an electric shock wants at least to be ap- 
plied judiciously, and with some regard to 
the strength of the patient. There lay the 
shattered pot, there was the warm black 
earth scattered far and wide ; and there, 
sprinkled upon it, so to say, were three 



GARDENING BY M YSELF. 69 

brown canna seeds, each showing an unmis- 
takable white root and the tip of a young 
green leaf. Well, there was no use in driv- 
ing them into seclusion again. I brought 
little pots, and gave each seedling one ; hid- 
ing the green shoot lightly beneath the soil, 
that it might after all take its own time for 
appearing. Then I searched out the rest 
of the seeds, crumbling every black lump 
of earth, sifting and examining with my fin- 
gers, finding the other three one by one. 
But they were all in their original state of 
blackness and hardness ; and though I re- 
planted them, giving them both steam and 
sun, not one was kind enough to grow. The 
first three flourished and made fine plants. 

N. B. — In trying this experiment, it is 
well to count your seeds before planting, 
that you may know when you have picked 
them all up. 



MAY. 

" O said the little blades of grass, 

Growing up ; 
" O, how the spring hours pass, 

Butter-cup ! 
Winds come and whistle. 

And birds come and sing, 
And the early time of life 
Is a very sunny thing !" 

*' Yes," said the buttercup, and bowed 
Very lo%v ; — 

" And joy cometh also from a cloud. 
As you know : 

Soft April showers. 
And sweet drops of rain, 

How they make our faces shine 

When the sun comes out again !" 

THE days pass, and the weeks gather 
them up, and still there is little change 
in our garden. Cold winds by day, and light 
frosts by night, rather chill the energies of 
young seedlings, and they are slow to ven- 
ture forth into such an unpromising world. 
(70) 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. yi 

But though we must confess, with the won- 
derful writer of the Big-low papers, that 

" Half our May's so awfully like mayn't," — 

yet who is not ready to follow him fur- 
ther, in his rejoicing over our seasons just 
as they are ? 

" Though I own up, I like our back'ard springs, 
That kind o' haggle with their greens an' things. 
An' when you most give up, 'ithout more words 
Toss the fields full o' blossoms, leaves and birds," 

It is dangerous to begin quoting from 
such a book of beauties ! I am tempted on. 
But as Mr. Biglow himself remarks : 

•"Nuffsed." 

Slow as the season is in its developing 
process, invisible as is the growth which 
your little plants do really make from day 
to day, it is well that there is so much oth- 
er work to do in the garden besides watch- 
ing them. Work which cannot wait, and so 
makes our waiting easier. First go over 
the grass of lawn and edgings, and have 
bare spots resodded or broken up and 



72 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 



Sprinkled with grass seed and clover : even 
a light dressing of fine barn-yard manure 
will do much. All rubbish of sticks and 
stones — the drift of winter storms — should 
have been raked off long ago. Dig up any 
wild onions that show their presumptuous 
heads, getting the start of the grass ; and if 
sorrel appears here and there, give it such a 
dusting with wood-ashes that it will be glad 
to hide. Just now, while merely in leaf, you 
notice it less ; but by and by, when it is in 
flower, the red patches will spoil the lawn 
effect, pretty as they may be in themselves. 

Put fresh gravel upon the walks wher- 
ever it is washed or worn away ; and the 
Quaker storm, when it comes, will beat all 
down into smooth compactness. 

In and about the flowerbeds, too, there is 
work. Honeysuckles need support and 
clipping, and roses need tying up. A tall- 
growing rose is twice as handsome if it is fast 
bound to a tall stake ; then the buds start out 
on every side, and you have a pyramid of 
rose? Prune off all the dead or half-dead 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 



73 



shoots, and all that have strayed into un- 
gainly length ; cutting them back to a sound, 
fresh bud. Above all, give them a thorough 
application of whale-oil soap, to kill or keep 
off the slugs ; unless indeed you have no 
such pests on your roses ; and even then it 
is safe, for an importation might come with 
some new rose-bush from a distance. If you 
are happy enough not to know them by 
sight, let me say that they are little green 
worm-like creatures — yet not quite a worm ; 
working generally on the under side of the 
green leaves (Mr. Henderson says that 
one variety eats the whole leaf) ; and mak- 
ing your roses look as if they had been 
through the fire. The fly is a small, gauzy- 
winged busybody, with a black head. Neith- 
er of them can bear whale-oil soap ; which 
for beings living on rose leaves, is not won- 
derful. Put a pound of this in eight gallons 
of water, and syringe the bushes, or water 
over the tops wi.th a fine-rose watering pot, 
just as the leaf buds begin to swell ; and re- 
peat the dose two or three times, until the 
7 



74 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 



leaves are full out. Then you will have no 
trouble. Florists, of more experience than I, 
say that prevention is the only thing with 
slugs ; and that if they once get on the bush 
you can do little more. But I have not 




MORNING GLORY IN SEED-LEAP. 



found it so. Once or twice when I have 
been away from home just at the critical 
time, and so the early dosing was neglected, 
and a few slugs made their appearance, I 
have found that soap-suds and hand picking 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 



75 



together would even then effect a clear- 
ance. 

During this month all seedlings may go 
into the open border, and all seeds be sown : 
some earlier, some later, according to their 
hardiness. Move those -young things that 




MORNING GLOKT "WITH FIRST LEAVES OUT. 

are for transplanting as soon as they 
have a pair of real leaves, or are large 
enough to be handled easily ; and thin 
out those that were sown at once in their 
summer home. It is hard to do this, — 



^6 GARDENING BY MYSELF. 

one has such a feeling- of the unknown 
possibilities locked up in each inch of 
green, and such a fear of pulling up the 
very finest varieties where all look alike. 
Yet this is sure, unless you thin them out (if 
the plants have come up fairly) no variety 
will do itself justice, and you w^ill hav^e a 
patch of spindling, flowerless stems, instead 
of abundant, thick-set leaves and blossoms. 
Let your asters stand from six to twelve 
inches apart, according to the kind, and 
stocks twelve inches, and zinnias twenty. 
Phlox may have a foot or more, according 
to the soil, for that has much to do with its 
growth, and alyssum and portulacca and 
the other low half-trailers need but three 
or four inches. Sweet peas want no thin- 
ning, — let them stand as thick as they will ; 
and mignonnette generally takes care of it- 
self. Then certain plants, like the tall 
Oenotheras and cockscombs, often show best 
standing singly, one in a place, with no 
other of the sort near by to divide attention. 
Cannas always look best so (unless you 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 



77 



want a tropical bed on the lawn, filled only 
with cannas and such like) ; and so do dah- 
lias, and chr3^santhemums, and tuberoses. 
You get more good from the one alone, can 
study and take it in better, than you can 
with a group of three or six. But try ex- 
periments with a part of your flowers — ex- 
periments in grouping and bedding ; prov- 
ing their capabilities, and what suits your 
soil and climate, and above all what suits 
you ; and then keep a record of your expe- 
rience. 

In warm quiet days, as the month goes 
on and frosts disappear, plant out the tender 
seedlings from your boxes ; and turn out 
potted plants into the border. Verbenas 
may be risked among the first, and scarlet 
geraniums I have always found to be of a 
much-enduring disposition ; and many ten- 
der things may go to the open air quite 
early in May, if you are careful to cover 
them slightly when the evening threatens 
frost. Bell glasses are seldom seen in our 
Fairyland. But a flower pot will do good 
7^ 



78 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 



service, and in quiet weather a cone-shaped 
twist of newspaper will be excellent protec- 
tion from Jack's slight attacks ; while a 
small box-frame with a bit of glass across 




HOME-MADE HAND GLASS. 



the top, can be left on both night and day 
in heavy weather. Or you may extempor- 
ize quite handsome covers thus : Get pieces 
of broken glass, of any variety of shapes ; 
cut them or have them cut so as to fit a lit- 
tle ; then join them, dome-fashion, with india 
rubber varnish and strips of tape. Varnish 
over the tape on the outside then, and fasten 
a wire or tape loop at the top for conven- 
ience in lifting. 

Old baskets are good for the same 
purpose ; and in England they make 
beautiful new wicker-work protectors. 1 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. yg 

am not sure whether it is much done 
here. 

Mr. Henderson says, that any plants in 
pots which will be wanted for winter bloom- 
ing-, should be kept in pots through the 
summer; the hole in the bottom being" 
well stopped up, that no roots may strike 
through, and the pots plunged — or set to 
the rim — in the open ground. The pots 
should be six or seven inches diameter in 
this case, so as to give the plant a little 
room. 

But all others may be turned out to take 
care of themselves. Now if your potted 
plants have been repotted often enough, 
you will find the turning out very easy 
work. Lay your left hand across the top 
of the pot, letting the plant stem pass deftly 
between your fingers ; turn the pot over, 
and strike lightly on the bottom with your 
other hand. This should be quite enough ; 
and the little ball of earth and roots slips 
gently down into your left hand, the plant 
being steadied and held in place by your 



So GARDENING BY MYSELF. 

fingers. But if the roots have taken too 
firm hold of the pot to yield to such slight 
persuasion, then put a blunt stick through 
the hole in the bottom of the pot, and gen- 
tly push against the crock that lies there. 
If both these fail, your plant has been long 
in need of repotting, and you must get 
it out the best way you can. '' One pro- 
ceeds with a knife, and inserts it all round 
the sides of the pot, and thus scoops it out ; 
another favourite way is to break the sides 
of the pot with a hammer."* I have seen 
both these things done, and say to all my 
readers. Don't ! And you had better lay 
the plant in water and soak it out, than with 
one great tug to tear it out by the roots. 

Dig a hole in the border a little deeper 
than your ball of earth, and set the plant in 
a slight basin rather than on a slight hill. 
Fill up neatly, water gently and by degrees, 
— over tops and all, if there is not much sun 
upon the leaves. And in planting out, as in 
sowing, keep always in mind the general 

* " Practical Floriculture." 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. gj 

effect as well as the individual display. 
This, too, will take study and thought 
and care. Your one rose geranium would 
be lost among the grasses, and w^ould 
just smother the trailers, yet be perfectly 
refreshing among the bright colours of taller 
plants. Your one coleus or achyranthes, 
so gorgeous in the sunlight, with a low set- 
ting of green or white, would lose half its 
own beauty among shady monkshood and 
full-faced perennial phloxes, without helping 
them one bit. Notice even the style of leaf 
and growth, as well as the colour of the 
flower, in your arrangement ; let the soft 
feathery kinds have room to toss and wave 
their tresses, and the sturdier ones shew all 
the beauty of their strength in a tall back- 
ground ; and skilfully scatter those plants 
which bloom but once among those which 
are always in blossom, so that there may be 
no bare, flowerless places in your beds at 
any time. 

I have been a good deal interested lately 
in one of my seedling dahlias. Instead of 



82 GARDENING BY M YSELF. 

the two broad, full-fleshed seed leaves with 
which all the rest came forth into the light, 
this sent up one Siamese-twin of a leaf; the 
tw^o seed-leaves that should have been, were 
joined together nearly their whole length, 
and with a single footstalk. Where would 
the true leaves make their appearance ? 
There was no sheltering nest between the 
seed-leaves, but only an irregular, out-of- 
the-way affair, that looked as if it had never 
found out its vocation. I watched and 
waited ; the plant did not droop, it did not 
grow. The other young dahlias, its com- 
panions, put forth their first pair of leaves, 
and their second pair of leaves ; and still 
the strange little seedling shewed nothing 
but its first one-sided growth. At last, 
when the third pair of leaves was unfolding 
on all the rest, the life in this began to stir. 
Down at the very foot of its one leaf stalk, 
close to the ground, came out a confused 
tuft of leaves. One seed-leaf — a sort of 
compound of what the first should have 
been and what it vv'as — with a cluster of 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 83 

Other and true Reaves, as if first, second, 
and third had got all mixed up, and so came 
out in a hurry together. But once fairly 
aroused and in motion, the little plant kept 
on. And now, transplanted to the garden, 
you would not know it from the rest ; un- 
less, looking closer, you spied the shapeless 
little tuft that clothes the foot of the stem. 

You .will find, by this time, that the 
clusters of tulips and hyacinths, just past 
their beauty, are decidedly in the way ; tak- 
ing room that you want to occupy at once 
with other plants. I have seen it stated, 
somewhere, that if the roots are lifted care- 
fully, and set in a trench in some reserve 
corner and well covered with earth, they 
will mature their leaves almost as well as if 
undisturbed. But I like " quite" much bet- 
ter than "almost," and have never tried 
this plan with any of mine. It seems to me 
that even if the old bulbs do not suffer, the 
young ones, just forming, must. A better 
way, I think, is to plant out your seedhng 
stocks and asters and petunias among the 



84 GARDENING BY MYSELF. 

bulbs as they stand. By the time these lit- 
tle things have established themselves and 
begun to grow, the others, whose work is 
done, can be safely taken up. Look over 
the beds from time to time, and wherever 
you see a tuft of bulb leaves turning yellow 
or dying off at the tips, that root is ready 
for its rest. Take them up in dry weather, 
and lay them in a dry shady place until the 
leaves are quite dead. Label the different 
kinds at first, and, when dry, store them 
away in separate wraps of soft paper — old 
seed bags are very good for this. Then 
keep them in a dr}^, airy place until the time 
for fall planting comes round again. 

But you will say to me, many people 
never take up their bulbs at all. I know ; 
but they lose a good deal for this little sav- 
ing of trouble. The tulips and hyacinths 
may bloom respectably for a season or two, 
but they are sure to run down after awhile ; 
and your beautiful " King Pepin," or '■'■ Cice- 
ro," or '' Duchess of Brunswick," mstead 
of one or two large, clearly-marked and 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 



S5 



proudly-set blossoms, will give you a clump 
of most unworthy descendants. I believe 
this is even more true of hyacinths than of 
tulips. Besides, if they are left in the mixed 
flower beds all summer, they run much risk 
of being cut or injured by the planting of 
other things and the dressing of the ground. 
You cannot tell just where they are, and 
you cannot have a regiment of tall sticks to 
point them out. And labels standing alone 
are only pleasant in spring, when your beds 
are all promise. 

Two ways I have seen described for mak- 
ing verbena beds, — both good, I suspect; 
certainly both worth trying. The first 
comes backed with a florist's authority : '* To 
grow verbenas successfully, plant them in 
beds cut in the turf Chop the turf well, 
and thoroughly mix with it a good share 
of well-decomposed stable manure ; never 
on any account plant them in old and worn- 
out garden soil, as they will most assuredly 
fail. Give them a change of soil each sea- 
son, as they do not thrive well two years in 
8 



86 GARDENING BY MYSELF. 

the same bed. Let the beds, if possible, be 
where they will have the sun the entire 
day. By following the above directions, 
one may have a verbena bed that will be a 
mass of bloom the entire season."* 

" I have two semicircular beds in which I 
have verbenas," writes " An Old Lady," in 
" Hearth and Home." ** These beds are 
covered with bloom from the middle of June 
to the middle of October. 

** Early in the spring, about the middle 
of March or first of April, I pull up all the 
old verbena vines, pile them and all the 
leaves they have collected round them in 
the middle of the beds and set fire to them, 
and when they are burned, rake the ashes 
well into the soil. A few shovelfuls of rich 
earth or well rotted manure is a good ad- 
dition. 

" Ab 3ut the first of May the verbenas be- 
gin to come up from their self-sown seeds, 
and when they are two or three inches high, 
I thin them out until they stand four inches 

* Dexter Snow. 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 87 

apart ; they will grow very rapidly. As 
soon as the blooms appear, all that are not 
satisfactory are pulled up. The richest pur- 
ple, the purest white, the most intense crim- 
son, the softest lavender, and the rosiest 
pink will delight your eyes ; and there will 
be no long, straggling stems or ugly patches 
of burnt-up soil visible, but masses of col- 
our and foliage, and material all summer 
long for innumerable bouquets." 

I have been obliged to shorten the pretty 
account, but this is it in substance. Both 
these ways are new to me, — the first comes 
from Massachusetts, the second from Ohio. 

Mr. Henderson, here in New York — or 
rather in New Jersey — says, " Verbenas are 
not at all particular about soil, provided it 
is not water-soaked ; we have planted them 
on soils varying from almost pure sand to 
heavy clay, and, provided it was enriched 
with manure, there was but little difference 
in growth or bloom." But his verbenas, 
"set out in May, by August will hnve 
SDread to a distance of three feet." 



88 GARDENING BY MYSELF. 

So I am ready to think, after all, that the 
care is the thing. Not sod, nor soil, nor 
ashes ; but cultivation. 

One thing is sure, — verbenas should be 
well pegged down as they grow. Neat lit- 
tle metal pins can be bought, by the gross, 
for this purpose ; but failingthem,make for 
yourselves little crotch sticks with long 
ends and short top, such as you can cut 
from any brushy growth in the woods. Or 
(privately) use hair-pins ! Petunias, too, 
thrive well under such confinement ; and 
the trailing tropseolums or nasturtiums. 

All sorts of training must be attended to 
now, when everything is making rapid 
growth ; for a little neglect at this stage of 
progress cannot always be set right by and 
by. If sweet peas once fairly try lying on 
the ground, they will lose much of their 
taste for climbing ; and an uncomely bend 
at this time of year, when plants are taking 
shape, may never be got rid of to the end. 
Have dark sticks (with the bark on is pret- 
tiest, — no painted sticks look half so well) 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 



89 



and plenty of soft strings. Twine and cord 
are apt to cut ; so if you have neither Japa- 
nese flax, nor bast mat, nor a yucca, take 
old bits of worsted braid or binding ; even 
neatly cut strips of cloth will answer, only 
let them be all dark coloured. Few things 
look more forlorn in a garden than bits 




STICK AND STRING SUPPORTS. 



of red, white and blue rags, fluttering and 
flaunting among the stately plants. Leave 
no long ends of any sort ; and cut leather 
from an old shoe for the stronger shoots of 
roses, etc., tying them with a cord passed 
through each end. 



OO GARDENING BY MYSELF. 

None of your gladiolus roots should be 
out of the ground much later than this. 
You may begin planting them by the mid- 
dle of April (three inches deep), and may 
plant from time to time for several weeks ; 
yet as the late plantings have most to fear 
from drought, I like the early work best. 
The different kinds will make a succession, 
even if planted together. 

Remember that last year's tuberose roots 
(those that bloomed last year) will not 
bloom again ; and so save both room and 
patience. Last year's new tubers or offsets, 
well cared for, will make blooming roots for 
next year, but not for this. In Italy, they 
say, where soil and climate are just the 
thing, the same tuberose blooms on from 
year to year, as the lily and gladiolus do 
with us. Here they give their white beauty 
but once. But how fair it is I How even 
superb, sometimes ! I had a tuberose one 
year with a flower stem more than six feet 
high ; and at the top a great head of sweet- 
ness, thick-set with blossoms, like a magni^ 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. qj 

fied hyacinth ; I never saw such another ; 
but even the small ones are delicious. 
And so — 

" Like the swell of some sweet tune, 
May glides onward into June.** 



JUNE. 

How vainly men themselves amaze, 
To win the palm, the oak, or bays, — 
And their incessant labours see 
Crowned from some single herb or tree. 
Whose short and narrow verged shade 
Does prudently their toils upbraid, 
While all the flowers and trees do close, 
To weave the garlands of Repose. 

— A ndrew J\Iarvel. 

DO you find time, in this "• high tide of 
the year," to peep over your garden 
fence now and then ? taking a look into the 
Fairyland which the Lord alone has plant- 
ed ? Have you kept watch of the progress 
there ? — from the first white saxifrage tuft 
or willow catkin, down through all the won- 
ders of squirrel-cup and wind-flower, colum- 
bine, arbutus, and Dutchman's breeches? 
Have you seen the uvularia hang its deli- 
cate yellow bell ? and found the May orchis, 
(92) 



GARDENING BY MYSELF, 



93 



rare every way in its fragrant pink dress ? 
Have your eyes rested on the white blood- 
root, and rejoiced in the dog's-tooth violet? 
with maple blossoms, red, yellow and green, 
and tresses of birch and alder, and the white 
clouds of shad blossoms, and dogwood in 
fair array? Have you admired — afar off 
and doubtfully — the great skunk-cabbage, 
which has indeed the good sense not to 
force itself into society, but comes out 
when little else is abroad ? And yet the 
thing is extremely well connected, — w'ith 
plenty of handsome cousins, and some of 
them in great demand. Your white calla 
is one of these, and the rich golden-club ; 
and sweet flag — which many people call 
"good enough to eat;" while midway be- 
tween stands Jack-in-the-pulpit, handsome 
and poisonous, like some other '* incum- 
bents ' that might be named. 

If you have followed all these in their 
coming forth, then are you ready for the 
June darlings. Wild lilies, in scarlet with 
yellow linings ; and partridge - berry, in 



94 GARDENING BY J^YSELF. 

white velvet, perfumed beyond " the pow- 
ders of the merchant ;" and pliant hare- 
bells, and the great yellow goblets of the 
tulip -tree. Then you will not miss the 
chick winter-green, with its striped leaf — 
for " foliage plants" are not confined to the 
garden ; and you will watch for the superb 
perfection of the wild lady's -slipper, or 
cyprepedium. 

Yet do not try to bring it into your 
Fairyland. It will not live long, — it cannot 
be itself while it lives. And this is strangely 
true of many of pur fairest wild plants. 
Whether the dry, sophisticated garden soil 
blights them ; whether they pine for the 
fresh scent of the woods, or miss their na- 
tive shade ; whatever it is, very few of 
them are worth the transplanting. The 
wild columbine loses its airy grace, and 
stands up stiff and still in a large family 
clump; the wind-flower thinks life not 
worth the having ; the little wood violets 
lose heart when confronted with " czar" 
and '' king," and dwindle and wish them- 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. ^^ 

selves at home. How can you comfort the 
partridge-berry, brought up in the shadow 
of the great pine woods ? or what can make 
amends to epigaea for the loss of its free 
home among the rocks ? Will tulips and 
hollyhocks be better society than the dear 
mosses among which they nestle ? — will all 
your admiration make up for the song of the 
wild birds and the soft pat of the squirrel's 
feet? 

There are some few exceptions to this, 
but in general (as I have found) it is among 
the hard stemmed plants. I have had the 
wild azalea live and bloom in its new settins:, 
year after year ; and the clethra, donning 
its white August dress as if at home. Yet 
they did not grow very much, — just lived 
and blossomed, biding their time. And in 
both cases I gave them a bed of their own 
native earth to rest in. 

Then there is moss-pink. If you have 
ever seen moss-pink at home, revelling in 
the clefts of the rocks in the spray of the 
waterfall, I am not sure that you would 



^6 GARDENING BY MYSELF. 

much care to see it anywhere else ; but, if 
not, you will find it a very Fairylandish 
thing indeed. And it is perfectly hardy, 
and does not need petting. 

Talking of what we may transplant, brings 
us back, naturally enough, to what we may 
not, — the wonderful things that grow in the 
Fairyland of some other people. I have 
spoken before of the good effect of a 
bright-leaved coleus or achyranthus among 
the flowering plants here and there. And 
sometimes they may seem hard to get. I 
know all about that. But sometimes, too, 
a friend will furnish a cutting ; sometimes 
you may find one, not exactly *' rolling 
up hill," as the children say, but still 
in unexpected places. Not in anybody's 
greenhouse, to begin with. There I would 
not pick up so much as a leaf from 
the floor. Professed gardeners are often 
very chary of their plants, even when their 
employers are not. Therefore take to your- 
self the old Arabic proverb, and '' in a field 
of melons don't pull up your shoe." Yet, in 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. gy 

other places, keep your eyes open. I have 
gathered seeds from refuse plants tossed 
over a garden wall on the Staten Island 
shore, and found a fine cactus cutting on 
the pavement in Broadway. And when 
times of sickness bring baskets of green- 
house beauty to your hands, then let the 
sweetness and the kindness take root and 
grow, in bits of myrtle and lavender and 
geranium, in small shoots of rare roses, or, 
perhaps, in the mere little fruit- stem of a 
cactus flower. 

If your flower beds are at all far apart, 
or even separated, you will find it has a 
pleasant effect to divide the flowers as 
well — I do not mean in the way of mass- 
ing, but let the combinations be different. 
Do not have everything everywhere, ex- 
cept, indeed, those few rare things, like 
roses, without which no combination is 
quite complete. But let there be a natural 
system of surprises in your garden. Keep 
the heliotropes rather to one quarter, and 
let carnations have their special region of 

9 



gS GARDENING BY M YSELF. 

bloom. Come upon the fuchsias suddenly, 
and let your tall perennial phloxes make a 
prospect in the distance. Chrysanthemums 
look best scattered, for at their time of glory 
the}^ have the field almost alone ; and the 
gladiolus and tuberose stems should lift 
themselves here and there in solitary beau- 
ty above the throng. So / think, — though 
gardeners say '' three in a place" and " five 
in a place." Geraniums and verbenas may 
go anywhere and everywhere. But one 
likes to lose zinnias, and come upon balsams, 
and see cockscombs for a change. 

In setting, out little plants at this season, 
if the weather is very hot and dry, it is a 
good way to lay them — root and branch — 
in a pan of water, and so plant them all 
dripping out of that. Water gently and 
repeatedly then, rather than very much at 
once, and shade at noonday with cones of 
newspaper, or flower-pots, or bits of board 
and shingle, or a cabbage leaf on a stick. 
Flower-pot shelters should be raised a little 
at one edge, — the rest are airy enough. 



GA RDENING BY M YSELF. qq . 

Sow certain things for succession, such as 
alyssum and mignonnette ; and if you can 
spare a bit of reserve ground, sow there 
small patches of many annuals, ready for 
emergencies. Keep back, also, a part of 
the little seedlings in boxes, for awhile, to 
replant in the borders ; for your flowers 
will have disasters and enemies and disap- 
pointments, like the rest of the world. The 
shower that seemed certain to come, may 
go round ; and the cool, cloudy day may 
turn hot and bright, v/ithering the young 
plants to a very dangerous degree of faint- 
ness. Or, with this danger past, others may 
start up unexpectedly. Perhaps some wan- 
dering rabbit, surveying the world by moon- 
light, will be smitten with a desire to taste 
your one Japanese chrysanthemum, and 
will ■ then and there cut it down to the 
ground, beyond hope of recovery — as hap- 
pened to mine the other night. Perhaps 
some other night-walker, in whom the love 
of the beautiful has not been quite killed 
along with his moral sense, will covet and 



J oo G^ RDENING BY M YSELF. 

seize and bear away your very loveliest 
blue hyacinth, just then in its glory. Per- 
haps a brown grub or cut-worm, working 
away underground, will mow off a dahlia 
shoot here, and a fine seedling hedysarum 
there, with a few sweet peas and other tri- 
fles ; making his night-meal of your most 
hopeful little plants, and leaving a mournful 
blank where yesterday stood the fresh young 
tuft of leaves. 

Well, to him, at least, you can deal out 
justice. It is not easy to reach the other 
marauders — not even when the rabbit re- 
turns for a rose geranium and your first 
verbena blossoms ; but the cut-worm can be 
found. He is hiding there close to the 
plant he has ruined ; generally a little below 
the surface ; waiting to rest himself and di- 
gest the chrysanthemum^ before he marches 
off for a change of diet in China asters. I 
think in most courts, even in our day, his 
sentence would be : 

" Guilt)'', and not recommended to mercy." 

In all such cases, plant again, and do not 



GA RDENING BY M YSELF. i q 1 

feel discouraged. There is only a limited 
number of cut-worms in the world, after all. 
I thought to myself this morning, when the 
whole garden was rejoicing over last night's 
rain, and only one of my poor stocks lay 
prostrate, that it was just the gentle tax we 
pay for the support of some of the Lord's 
creatures — creatures ugly to us, and yet 
having their appointed place and work in 
the world ; and probably (to a robin's eyes) 
their beauty. Of course, I would rather 
pay my tax in something besides gilliflow- 
ers ; and yet, after all, if it were left to me, 
what should I choose? A seedling helio- 
trope ? a shoot of my new passion vine ? a 
percentage of phlox ? Should I offer Mr. 
Grub a tuft of my thrifty mignonnette, fast 
pushing up into fragrance ? Could I afford 
him part of my pansies ? No, no, it is bet- 
ter as it is, — he breakfasting where he likes, 
and I seasoning my breakfast with patience ; 
for you know, though we might like to ban- 
ish him to the garden behind the house, yet 
there would be serious inconvenience if he 

9* 



1 02 GARDENING BY M YSELF. • 

took to living wholly on melons and Lima 
beans. We don't welcome him, and when 
he comes we search him out with untiring 
zeal ; but for the rest, we '11 just replant and 
be content. 

A few of your pot-plants, — geraniums, 
myrtle, and the like — may be safely detain- 
ed in the house until quite late ; both to re- 
pair such damages, and to replace hyacinths 
and tulips as they get out of the way. I 
rarely trouble myself to store crocuses and 
snowdrops through the summer. If you 
want them out of the beds, just make a lit- 
tle hole in lawn-turf near the house, drop in 
a crocus root — or a snowdrop — and cover it 
up ; and so on, till they are all disposed of. 
They will sleep there, safe and quiet, till 
the time of the spring awakening ; and then 
bloom out in full loveliness. So with snow- 
flakes and bluebells, or grape-hyacinths as 
they are called. I think they hardly ever 
show so well anywhere, as scattered about 
in the green grass. 

If you have pot-plants that are large, you 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 



lO' 



ma^ t^ave them in the pots and out of the 
grou A all summer. Set them in the barren 
corners of steps and piazzas, letting them 
drape (if one may say so) the dreary hues 
and edges of boards "and pillars. Or, \i yo\x 
set them out at all, merely plunge the pots to 
their full depth in the earth. In either case 
they need extra attention in dry weather. 




POT FEAME. 



And roses, as they grow, need frequent 
training and tying up. Those that send 
out long slender shoots show best when 



104 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 



trained as pillar roses ; fastened rather 
closely to a tall, strong stake, which should 
be set as near as possible to the main stem 
of the rose. Thus trained, the little short 
flowering shoots will start out on every side, 
and give you a pyramid or column of roses 
very beautiful indeed. But be 
careful to set the stake deep 
and firm ; else the first summer 
gust may turn your pyramid 
into a pink leaning tower of Pisa, 
— not at all to be desired, and 
hard to set straight. Pio Nono 
is a fine pillar rose, and Camille 
de Rohan, with its magnificent 
buds and depth of color ; and 
Lamarque — white and exquisite ; while the 
Duchess of Sutherland is superb if allowed to 
shape and train itself with the least help ; 
and Salet cannot be improved, and needs 
only just support enough to hold up its 
heavy head of sweetness. This last is a 
" perpetual moss," — lovely in every stage of 
developement, and fragrant ap an ideal rose. 




FRAME POR 
ROSES, ETC. 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 



105 



Among the more tender kinds (all the above, 
except Lamarque^ are perfectly hardy) you 
will find Sombriel very near perfection, and 
Clara Sylvain as dainty and delicate as its 
name, and Camellia and Agrippina an unfail- 
ing source of brilliant crimson and clear 
white blossoms, the season through. Mme, 
Falcot will give you plenty of lovely buff 
buds (the full-blown rose is not so fine) and 
Douglass is a rich deep red of peculiar shade 
and beauty. And to go back to the hardy 
hybrid perpetuals, do not fail to have Jules 
Margottin among your new roses, when 
they come. 

All constant bloomers do best credit to 
their name if the faded roses are not al- 
lowed to remain on the bush. It is not 
enough to scatter the rose leaves in a pink 
and white shower upon the grass ; the whole 
rose — calyx and seed-vessel and all — should 
be snapped off. Better still it is to take a 
small sharp knife, or pruning scissors, and 
cut back each flower stem that has lost its 
treasure, to a point just above the next leaf- 



I06 GARDENING BY MYSELF. 

bud. From this a new flower shoot will 
spring- out, and your bushes will be in much 
more constant bloom. In this, or in any 
other pruning, cut clean and short, not with 
a long slant. 





SHOET PRUNING. SLANT PRUNING. 

If anything has hindered your preventing 
the attack of the slugs, still wage war on 
them now. A few leaves may be injured 
and need clipping off; but whale-oil soap- 
suds will triumph in the end, and j^our roses 
come out all fresh and bright in the latter 
part of the season. 

I planted at the back of some beds where 
a sort of screen was wanted, a row of gay 
vines — Ipomoea limbata, and I. kermesina, 
and the new bright yellow convolvulus, start- 
ing them first in the house. They grow 



GARDENING B Y M YSELF. i qj 

well, and promise to cover their rough ce- 
dar hedge with beauty. The browner, the 
rougher your hedge sticks are, the prettier, 
— so I think. A smooth green carpenter's 
trellis never sets off the vines to so good ef- 
fect. Let them wander a little on their way 
to the top, and they will make all the fairer 
show. 

Flower beds now want daily inspection. 
In spite of all your care some few seedlings 
will die ; so that one morning you will find 
a blank in a patch of asters, and next day a 
vacant place among your stocks, and your- 
regular lines of phlox will become irregular, 
needing a few new recruits. Then close 
watching against the weeds is of much im- 
portance, and far better than fighting against 
them. Sorrel and clover and couch grass 
will make short work with your delicate 
plants ; choking them, starving them to 
death, making them die of both shade and 
hunger. For so en wrapt with a coarser na- 
ture than its own, the seedling flower can 
get strength from neither the ground nor 



1 08 GA RDENING BY M YSE LF. 

the air ; can never drink in the dew noi 
bathe itself in the sunshine. And weeds 
have a fashion of starting up exactly where 
your young plants are set ; availing them- 
selves of protection, it may be, against hoe 
and rake, as an army sometimes advances 
with prisoners at the front. Hoe and rake 
are, indeed, of little use here ; and only in- 
exorable fingers can avail. Nor can these 
always help making sad work, if the weed is 
well grown and the flower very young. In 
such a contingency (which may come up 
sometimes, even in the best regulated gar- 
dens) put the fingers of your left hand close 
about the stem of the little plant, holding it 
well down, and then with the right hand 
root out the weed, using a quiet, steady 
pull, rather than violence. If the verbena 
or aster can be thus kept in place, while 
only the intruder is uprooted, it will pro- 
bably soon establish itself again and grow 
on joyously. But if the weed roots have so 
wrapped it round that it must needs come 
out too, then you can onl}' replant and 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 109 

water and shade. Take notice here to have 
jour seedling plants quite clear from weeds 
when you set them out. Let them at least 
begin all right. Don't trust the innocent 
green faces of the seedling weeds that 
sprinkle the surface of the pot earth, pretty 
as they may look just now. Young chick- 
weed and clover have a power of growing 
up that is quite astonishing to unsuspicious 
people. 

I remember, as I write, that some great 
authority — Mr. Henderson, I think — says 
it is a shame ever to have a visible weed in 
your garden, — they should all be destroyed 
before they can be seen. And " true for 
ye !" — as some of the weed-pullers would 
say. There never would be a weed seen m 
my garden, if I had ten men at my disposal. 
Or ten women. But some of us cannot 
spend quite all our time in Fairyland. 

When clipping off the dead roses, as I 

have advised, look over those that are just 

opening, to see what evil-doers may be there. 

Some rosebug, founding a colony ; some 

10 



1 1 o GARDENING BY M YSELF, 

green ^* worm i' the bud," choosing for him- 
self a pink house, which he will straightway 
turn into a ruin ; some leaf-roller, perhaps, 
tying up the whole end of a young shoot for 
his own private apartments. If you will 
take a little trouble with these creatures 
in time, ^om never need have much to 
take. 

I have paid heavy taxes this week. For 
two or three years past I had been trying to 
raise the climbing fumitory — Adluniia cir- 
rhosa — from seed ; and after many failures, 
last year one plant grew but did not flower. 
I kept it in the house all winter, not trust- 
ing the hardiness of so young a plant, and 
this spring set it out in the open border. 
Late frosts came, but did not hurt it ; and 
soon new fresh leaves began to replace the 
faded winter tuft. Then the leaf shoots 
began to twine, elongating themselves curi- 
ously into a sort of tendril. I gave it the 
help of a bushy cedar stick, and up went my 
fumitor}^ hand over hand, like Jack's bean 
with Jack after it. Presently the leading 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 



Ill 



shoot was five feet long, and I began to 
watch for flower buds. 

One morning, going out to 
attend to some other plants 
near by, I glanced towards my 
pretty vine, and saw that its 
delicate leaves were drooping. 
Not with the sunshine, alas ! 
They were not faint — they 
were dying. And, yes ; just 
as I thought; the whole vine 
was cut off" at the very root ! 
Not the leading shoot, merely, 
but every smaller one also, 
which might have taken its 
place. And, of course, close 
to the scene of destruction, 
barely hid away under the soil 
^-too full to move, was the largest sort of a 
cut-worm ; snugly curled round and repos- 
ing after his night's work. Judging from 
this one specimen, I should say that adlu- 
mias have a fattening quality which is 
quite remarkable. 



r-4 



VINE SUPPORT. 



1 1 2 GARDENING BY M YSELF. 

I left the root of my poor vine, to see if 
perchance another shoot would spring up ; 
but no, it had lost strength or courage. 
Then I took it up, and planted Thunber- 
gias, — and didn't much care whether they 
grew or not ! 

But oh ! what rare Japanese pinks are 
blooming out now, and what heartsease ! 
And every night CEnothera Lamarckiana 
opens its lovely blossoms, and my seedling 
petunias are coming in all sorts of styles. 
White lily buds are pushing on apace, and 
Mr. Vick's L. Thunbergianum grandiflortim is 
opening its rich dark beauty, and Mr. Hen- 
derson's lobelia Miss Murphy wins general 
and loving admiration. The new pyre- 
thrums that I raised last year from seed 
have been in bloom for weeks, in many 
tints, — not double, but very showy. The 
candytuft which I transplanted is in full 
bloom, and so is the self-sown mignonnette. 
And if you want a truly beautiful variegated 
geranium of the zonale class, get Black 
Hawk. 



GARDENING BY M YSELF. 1 1 3 

It is a time for the constant doing of little 
things, this flowery month of June. The 
grand spring planning is over, passing fast 
into results testing its excellence. So also 
with the spring planting — its bright antici- 
pations, its many hopes. The days, as they 
roll on, say pleasantly : " Noics avons change 
tout cela /" What is left ? What has come 
out of it all ? 

To begin with, let me say that it is too 
soon yet for our gardens to be new editions, 
in man3^-coloured bindings, of " Great Ex- 
pectations Realized." You must give even 
the most industrious and well-intentioned 
flowers time. Is it nothing, think you, to 
elaborate such wonderful tints and forms 
from the colourless air and the dull, brown 
earth ? nothing, to arrange and perfect such 
a system of roots ? nothing, to assimilate all 
that a plant can, of sunshine and rain and 
dew ? How long does it X.'sik.Q you to grow 
to perfection by that same process of (men- 
tal) assimilation ? 

Therefore do not try to hurry your plants 
10' 



>rk 



114 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 



too much, — give them every needed help, 
every delicate attention ; and let them have 
time, and do you have patience. You must 
not expect to see your Fairyland what gar- 
deners call a *' mass of bloom" so early in 
the season. If the beds were full now, they 
would be over-crowded by and by ; there- 
fore enjoy the flowers that are out and the 
growth already made, and be thankful as 
well as patient. Cannot one wait a little 
among such troops of roses? Why, my 
Souveiiir Henry Clay is so heavy with bloom 
that neither stake nor string will hold it. I 
have tied it again and again. Pio Nono is all 
in green just now, at the end of the month, 
gathering strength for a fresh outbmrst ; and 
Salet bears the last few of its new crop. 
And the beautiful Mine. Bosanquet blushes 
always ; and Mme. Falcot wears her daily 
dress of dainty buff; and Mme. Plaiitier has 
well-nigh said farewell until another year. 

Just over Mine. Falcot rise the tall stems 
of my excelsmn lily, with pendant bells of 
rosy buff, touched off with anthers of deep 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 



115 



orange red. The annunciation lilies (L. 
candidum) — old, classical, but too pure or 
too something for most modern gardens — 
are sweet after their own rare fashion, 
gleaming out in spotless white ; and to my 
great pleasure, my new L. auratum shews 
three buds that promise full developement. 
The first one I planted, promised and failed. 
This was put in without any manure near 
it, and does better. L. thunbergianum and 
L. fulgidum are both past or passing, but 
both are fine : the first, a dark, gloomy red ; 
the second, red, flushed with orange. 

You will think I have forgotten the little 
things to do, in the great things done. 

First of all, then, there are weeds — always 
weeds — to be nipped long before they reach 
the bud. Then there are bare spots of earth 
between your plants, uncovered as yet, and 
always prone to bake and harden in the 
June sun. For both of these a small, fine 
rake is the best cure. Constant working 
among your plants, with a careful hand, is 
the greatest possible refreshment to them 



1 1 6 GARDENING BY M VSELF. 

as well as to you. How easily the dew 
takes effect upon the softened earth ; how 
surely some sweet and gentle influences 
find their way into your spirit, if the care- 
trodden routine of life is broken up and 
stirred by work among those things which 
God has made and not man. 



JULY. 

Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or 
loose the bands of Orion ? 

Canst thou lift up thy voice to the clouds, that abun- 
dance of waters ma}'^ cover thee ? — Job 38 : 31, 34. 

I DO not know how any one can take 
full comfort in his garden who does not 
meet the Lord there. If all the little disap- 
pointments are to be borne alone ; if all the 
beauties that spring up under your hands 
bring no thought of the hand that created 
them, then the garden will be a very shorn 
place indeed, and you will fail to get from 
it half its richness. For the loss of a favour- 
ite plant makes us rich — and not poor — if it 
comes as a new, gentle lesson in learning 
the Lord's will, in accepting his choice in- 
stead of our ov\^n. That acceptance (it is 
more than mere submission) makes a thread 
of perfect gold all through the duskiest Hfe- 



1 1 8 GARDENING BY M YSELF, 

pattern. And do I think it is in place with 
such very little things? O yes! — with 
everything. I had seen very little of life- 
work when the knowledge first came to me. 

I was standing by the river side waiting 
for my father, who at that time went to 
town every morning and came home every 
night. This night he failed to come. I 
saw the little boat break through the river- 
shadows with her line of light, I heard the 
oars dip and work, but the seat in the stern 
was empty. 

Dr. Skinner stood near me on the land- 
ing, — stepping about, musing, half whistling, 
as he often did Not talking to me, nor 
seeming to notice me just then at all. Yet 
perhaps his eye caught my look, or his ear 
my tone, as I said quietly, — 

' He has not come !" 

With one of his quick motions Dr. 
Skinner faced round upon me. 

''Are you resigned ?" he said. That was 
all. 

I have had greater things to resign since 



GARDENING B V MYSELF. 



119 



then, but the lesson about little things has 
never passed away. 

How do you manage in this July weath- 
er, — sometimes hot, sometimes dry, always 
uncertain ? How do you get along, when 
" the dust groweth into hardness, and the 
clods cleave fast together," unless you rec- 
ognize the Lord's hand in it all, and so 
accept his work? Easy then it is to wait 
for ''the small rain, and the great rain of 
his strength ;" easy even to bear " the treas- 
ures of the hail," if they come ; well know- 
ing that the " clouds are numbered in wis- 
dom." 

It is not an unmixed pleasure to go over 
your garden, even in the best of weather. 
Some blanks will be there, in spite of every- 
thing. For instance, this year asters and 
phlox and gilliflowers — three of my especial 
pets — have been in the duQips, and not dis- 
posed to grow. I planted them out when 
too small (don't do that), and then was oblig- 
ed to leave them to look after themselves, 
(also not to be done, if you can help it). 



1 20 GARDENING B Y MYSELF. 

Then I think the mischievous thrips, too 
small to trace save by their mischief; being 
(to quote Carlyle) *' like grains of gunpow- 
der — singly contemptible, but highly re- 
spectable in mass ;" I think they have brows- 
ed upon my poor seedlings in preference to 
older plants. I have sowed both asters and 
phlox again, for replanting. 

It is pretty to note the quickened prog- 
ress of things, as the season gets fairly un- 
der way, and plants begin to realize that if 
the}^ are to make a show at all, they must 
be about it. How fast the slender verbena 
widens out into a spread of beauty — in what 
a hurry the sweet peas come out ; purple 
and white and painted ladies jostling each 
other with soft wings ! Seedling petunias 
display their eccentricities, the last one 
open, having a large white blossom with a 
deep purple stain in the centre, as if one of 
my pansies were stationed there on guard. 
How fairly the geraniums unfold leaf after 
leaf, like a ship crowding sail as the breeze 
freshens ! By the way, it was a little incau- 



GARDENING BY M YSELF. \ 2 1 

tious in me, dealing as I profess to do with 
things attainable by everybody, to instance 
Black Hawk of all my geraniums. For that 
is a twelve-shilling novelty — one that I should 
not have had myself, but for the open hand 
of a great florist, who is as generous as he 
is skilful. 

If you w^ould keep your garden from de- 
generating into very seedy real hfe, as the 
summer goes on, 3^ou must keep all dead 
flowers picked off". Sweet peas, for in- 
stance, will bloom the season through, un- 
less you let them ripen seed. Then the 
vines spend all their strength upon the 
swelling pods, and presently turn yellow at 
the root, and cease to be a thing of beauty 
or a joy. So with pinks, so with many other 
flowers. Some, indeed, take care of them- 
selves. Petunias drop their blossoms and 
leave no sign that mars the plant, and pan- 
sies seem to have strength for everything ; 
but verbenas and geraniums, though they go 
on blooming, yet soon get a sort of encum- 
bered look if the seed-heads are left on. Of 
1 1 



X 22 GARDENING BY M YSELF. 

course where the seed is ornamental, and 
the plant grown chiefly for that, these words 
do not apply. Honesty (lunaria) must not 
be shorn of its dead flower stems, and the 
ornamental gourds must be left to perfect 
their fruit. But as a general thing you 
never need fear to pick your flowers with 
the greatest freedom ; you will have all the 
more left. It is the very way to make them 
bloom, a friend of mine used to say ; and 
she was one famous both for picking and 
having. It holds good in many depart 
ments, from the days of Bunyan down : 

" There was a man (though some did count him mad). 
The more he cast away, the more he had." 

And so while some plants — and people — 
live a stinted, dry, bloomless life, others, 
through constant imparting of their riches, 
are all blossom and fragrance. " They shall 
still bring forth fruit in old age ; they shall 
be fat and flourishing." 

You can if you choose leave a few pods 
for seed, if you wish to save your own. 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 



123 



But generally enough will ripen in hiding 
places, tucked away out of sight among the 
foliage, to answer all your needs ; and in the 
case of sweet peas, the seed is so cheap 
that ev^en this is of little consequence. 
Mignonnette seed you must gather from time 
to time, choosing those capsules that shew 
dark grains within their small open mouths. 
And pansy seed you must watch for, — the 
seed-vessels burst wide apart almost before 
the seed is ripe, scattering it hopelessly. 
Sweet peas have a trick of doing this, too ; 
and phlox, and balsams ; and some people 
recommend a little muslin bag tied round the 
flower stem, for a seed-catcher. 

In saving the seeds of asters and zinnias, 
make sure that you go quite down to the 
bottom of the chaffy cup in which they rest, 
else you may get only chaff; and let all new- 
gathered seed lie out in some airy shady 
place to dry a little, before you put it away. 

Whenever you can get ladies' small pru- 
ning shears or scissors, you will find them of 
great use in all these clipping operations 



1 24 GARDENING BY M YSELF. 

For while tbej are strong enough, by means 
of a sliding spring, to cut easily a good stout 
shoot of old wood from a rose or a black- 
berry, they are also so small and light as to lie 
in a little basket and work in a tired hand. 
Such a pair can be found at the chief seed 
and agricultural stores, price from $2 50 up. 
Shears without the spring are cheaper, but 
will not do the same execution. Arrange a 
small plain basket, for work, not show ; with 
your shears (or failing that, an old pair of 
scissors), a knife, half a dozen labels, a pen- 
cil, and some strands of bast mat, or other 
soft strings. Then in another basket, larger 
but still light, have a trowel, and support- 
sticks of various lengths, and you are 
equipped. The sticks should be smooth and 
straight, v^^ith the bark on if possible ; and 
the labels neatly fashioned out of bits of old 
shingle, not less than four inches long. You 
can get these labels from the seedsmen, 
ready made, for twenty cents a hundred, if 
you can spare so much from your seed 
money. There is no better way of marking 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 



125 



labels indelibly (that I know) than the old 

one : — whiten the smooth surface lightly with 

white lead, and write while it is wet, with a 
common pencil. If you have an indelible 

garden pencil, the wood must be wet with 
soda or saleratus water instead. Some peo- 
ple prepare a number of labels thus, and 
so have them fit for use at any time. 

And when the two baskets are ready, and 
your day's work is done, then go forth togeth- 
er in the edge of the evening for rest. You 
will forget how tired you are while you are 
tying up the pinks, bowed down with only the 
weight of their own loveliness. And the dry 
cares and parching disappointments of the 
day will somehow grow gentler as you sprin- 
kle soft refreshment on the little seedlings 
that have also, after their own fashion, been 
bearing the burden and heat of the day. And 
the pruning, severe though it may have been, 
in your life experience, will somewhat 
change its look as you catch a glimpse of 
the needs-be, through the medium of your 
own wise and tender meaninof in what 



II 



* 



126 GARDENING BY M YSELF, 

seems — at first sight — so harsh. Cut back 
the roses? pinch out the balsam's leading" 
shoot? insist that your ipomeas shall climb 
at your pleasure, instead of wandering aim- 
lessly about? Ay, — and a few weeks will 
shew why ; in the abundant colours and the 
richer green, in the close, compact, working 
growth. A few weeks for the flowers ; but 
with us it is a few years. Even so. 

" Every branch that beareth not fruit he 
taketh away, and every branch that beareth 
fruit he purgeth it, that it may bring forth 
more fruit." 

Among the hardy perennial flowers, there 
are many lovely, old-fashioned kinds, well 
worth the having — if you can get them. 
Spiderwort, with its deep blue eyes ; and 
ragged robin, with its funny fresh look of 
mconseguence, daffodils and rocket for the 
early spring ; and periwinkle and money- 
wort to carpet any bare spot of ground ; 
and lilies of the valley, and Solomon's seal, 
— with a host more. Some of them you 
will find in the florist's catalogue; a few in 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 



127 



the seedsman's list ; but everywhere under a 
new name, where you must have sharp wit 
to find them out. For few innocent mind- 
ed persons would ever guess that Alyssum 
saxatile meant golden basket, or that Lych- 
nis flos-cuculi and ragged robin were one and 
the same. It's all nonsense, by the way that, 

" A rose by any other name would smell as sweet." 

Can you get at the perfume of a wall-flow- 
er through Cheiranthus cheiri ? 

Well — have all of the old-fashioned beau- 
ties you can get and find room for ; but 
some I fear live only in memory, and many 
have retreated to the gardens where fashion 
never comes. There you may find them — 
if you can find the gardens ; and can may be 
get a root or a layer or a " slip " for the ask- 
ing. They will not all grow^ well from seed. 

In these days, when there is so little to do 
in the garden except waiting for rain, and 
fighting the weeds that wont wait for it, the 
spare minutes may be well employed in in- 
creasing the number of your plants. Not 



128 GA RDENING BY M YSELF. 

by sowing seeds — it is too early yet for that, 
except the few things that are sown for suc- 
cession ; but in the way of layering, budding 
and making cuttings. This last, Mr. Hen- 
derson calls the most important of all floral 
operations ; furnishing, with care, an inex- 
haustible supply of plants. And he adds 
the comforting assurance, that care is the 
thing needed, not great knowledge. Yet a 
little knowledge is a good foundation for 
care's work. 

When I was a child, I was taught elabo- 
rately how to make cuttings in the English 
fashion, by our English gardener, — a man 
thoroughly at home in the business from a 
seven years' apprenticeship and much use. 
His success was always good ; and mine, 
following his directions, was rarely want- 
ing. Yet some of these English ideas Mr. 
Henderson has, American like, cut down 
and simplified ; and so I shall sometimes 
choose to give you his directions, rather 
than those which I could more properly call 
my own. The simpler the better, always. 



GARDENING BY M YSELF. j 29 

Leaving for the present some varieties of 
the work which are better suited to the cool 
autumn months than to this dry heat, let 
me tell you first what can be done now. 
Layers can be made among your roses any 
time from the middle of June, till the Sep- 
tember frosts set in. The shoots should be 
new wood, not more than a month old. 




LATEB, SHOWING OTT, PEG, WEDGE, ETC. 

Make your cut in the midst of the green, 
fresh leaves ; first down half through the 
shoot, and then along, splitting it lengthwise 



1 30 GARDENING BY M YSELF. 

for three quarters of an inch or more, accord- 
ing to the size, and on the upper side. Bend 
the shoot gently over, and peg it down, with 
the cut an inch or so deep in the earth. 
And it is usual to put a bit of stone or stick 
— an}^ small trifle- — in the cut to keep it 
open. The layers may be made in the mere 
garden bed, or in small pots sunk up to their 
rims by the side of the bush. Layers in 
pots give the strongest plants soon, as they 
can be set out in the fall with less disturb- 
ance to their roots, and so get better estab- 
lished before winter. 

Another plan, very successful in hot 
weather, is a sort of air layering. Did you 
never notice a broken twig, which hanging 
just by a mere fibre of bark, had hardened 
and granulated at the broken end, as if all 
ready to send out roots ? I have, — and 
wonder now at my own stupidity that could 
not put two and two together. For that 
was really an air layer, — onl} when made 
on purpose, the branch is cut and wedged 
open just as for an earth layer. The roots 



GARDENING BY M YSELF. \ 3 1 

will put forth into the mere open air ; and 
then the layer should be at once cut off and 
set in a small pot, and shaded and watered 
until it begins to grow. 

In making layers from some plants, the 
shoot is not cut, but is twisted — or has a bit 
of the bark taken off. 

Budding, too, is summer work. Let it be 
done, says Mr. Henderson, either so early 
that the new shoots can ripen before frost, 
or so late that they will not start until 
spring. That is, either before midsummer 
or in the fall. The stem or stock on which 
you bud must be in just that state when the 
bark will easily quit the wood ; and the bud 
itself must be taken from a well-grown shoot, 
thus. Cut across the shoot a 
half inch or so above a leaf, and 
from that cross-cut bring the 
knife down through the wood 
to as fa^ below the leaf, taking 
out a bit of bark and wood an 

PREPARED BUD. . , i i i J ^^ „ 

mch long, and sloped to a 
.ooint at the lower end, like a long, narrow 




132 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 



triangle. Carefully take out the bit of wood 
from the bark and examine the bud at the 
foot of the leaf, to see that it is sound and 
perfect. If there is a little hole there in- 
stead, throw away your bit of bark and try 
again. Then on the stock make a cross-cut 





STOCK WITH INCISIONS. 



BTOCK Wixa BXTD IKBERTED. 



just through the bark, and from the middle 
of this a like cut straight down and as long 
as your bud. Gently loosen and lift the 
cut edges of bark, and slip in the point of 
your bud, easing it down till the leaf stalk 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 



133 



is near the centre of the long cut. Then 
bind it firmly round with bast-mat or lamp- 
wick, winding the strand above and below 
the bud, taking care not to injure that in 
any way ; not letting the binding cover it, 
nor making the whole so tight as to cut into 
the bark of the stock. You merely want to 
kold the bud in place, and to keep out the 
air ; covering tke cut edges of the bark com- 
pletely, so as to give the stock and bud a 
chance to unite. 

For good buds of choice va- 
rieties, as well as for cuttings, 
you must sometimes depend 
upon friendly gardens having a 
larger variety than your own. 
And remember it is of first-rate 
importance in budding, that 
the bud should be plump and 
fresh. Therefore if the bud 
shoots are to be brought or 
sent any distance, be careful 
to guard them against even 
the first symptom of dryness. 
12 




8TOCIK AND BUD 
BOTTND UP. 



1 34 GARDENING BY M YSELF. 

They may be packed in damp moss and oil- 
silk paper, and go safe ; but as people seldom 
carry those conveniences in their pocket, and 
as one may be offered a new rose-shoot when 
one is away at a tea-drinking, let me tell 
you a substitute. Ask for a raw potato, cut 
it in two, and stick the ends of your rose- 
shoots well in. There is nothing better. 
I am not sure that any of the books recom- 
mend a plan so unlike all ** modern improve- 
ments," but our old gardener approved it 
greatly ; and he would go off in a hot morn- 
ing and bring back a potato full of new 
cherry buds, or have apple shoots sent to 
him thus from a hundred miles away. 

Hot weather is not the best time for cut- 
tmgs ; but of course we who live by ouu 
wits must learn to make use of things just 
when they come, and cannot refuse sprigs 
of geranium because it is July. We get 
them in a bouquet, or on a visit ; or they 
come to bless our sick-room. And here let 
me say, there is no sweeter kindness to an 
invalid than to send her flowers — cut flow- 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 



135 



ers, not a dress bouquet ; and there is no 
better amusement for her (if she can do any 
thing) than to play garden with them. A 
knife and scissors for trimming, a saucer of 
sand ; water and sunshine ; are all she needs 
for great success in striking her cuttings. 
Then fresh earth, a kitchen spoon, and the 
smallest sort of pots when they begin to 
grow. It is such fascination to study fresh 
life when you are languid ! — life that is not 
flaunted in your face, that does not extin- 
guish you wdth its wild breath ; but is gen- 
tle, quiet, tender, with the very fragrance 
of the Lord's touch. Sitting there by your 
flower-stand, with eyes shut or open, there 
comes over your restlessness a certain sense 
of rest, and peace somehow soothes away 
even the thought of discontent. 

" The earth is satisfied with the fruit of Thy works." 

And as we remember, we are satisfied too. 

When by any good, honest means we have 
cuttings of fine plants at our disposal, then 
monies the question what to do w^ith them. 



1 36 GARDENING BY M YSELF, 

how to make them grow ? The way is not 
hard. But first about getting them. Do 
you think I am needlessly fastidious ? 
Where a plant is large, why may not one 
take a cutting ? Or what harm to gather 
from another plant, loaded with ripe seed? 
That sounds reasonable ; but it does not 
work well. An unmanageable golden rule 
encircles other people's flowers, to my eyes : 
a sure sense that, for some reason or other, 
sofnebody would rather I should not touch. 
Perhaps those seeds are the very first that 
have ripened, and the owner has not yet 
secured her own supply — perhaps you 
might take off a cutting in just the wrong 
place. One thing is certain : if you know a 
person well enough to treat her plants as if 
they were your own, you also know her 
well enough to ask leave. 

Now then for our cuttings. How will 
you choose them ? — if you can choose, — for 
upon the proper ripeness of the wood will 
depend much of your success. In all soft- 
wooded plants, such as fuchsias and v<irbe- 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 



137 



nas, the shoot should be so tender that it 
will break. Where it bends under your fin- 
gers, the wood is already too hard to fur- 
nish the best cuttings. They might grow, 
but neither so soon nor so vigorously. In 
roses and other plants called hard-wooded, 
the shoot may be somewhat riper. It is 
difficult to give an exact rule — try, and learn. 

Then make your cuttings short. From 
two to four inches is quite long enough, and 
even a single inch is worth much, even in 
non-professional hands. Professional ones 
will almost strike cuttings from the shadow 
of one plant and the smell of another. But 
you will need to practise a good deal before 
you can divide a leaf and get a plant from 
each end. 

Make a smooth, clean cut across your 
shoot, just below a joint, say the old gar- 
dening rules ; but it seems now that this is 
not needful with most plants. " Blind 
shoots" — i.e., shoots with no flower-bud at 
the end — are the best in roses, and perhaps 
ilj^other plants. Clip off a few lower leaves, 
12-^ 



138 



GARDENING B V MYSELF. 



and set your cuttings pretty close together 
in three or four inches of sand or earth, 
covering them up to the first joint. Press 
the earth firmly round them, water tho- 




CUTTING AS SET OUT. 

roughly, and then never allow them to 
wilt ; giving also plenty of air but not 
much sun at first. 

With the " saucer system" — grand for dry 
weather or a sick room — you set the cut- 
tings in a common saucer full of common 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 



139 



sand ; then keep them in the fullest sun- 
shine you can find, and also keep the sand 
as wet as very wet mud. In either case, 
pot off the cuttings in small separate pots 
of fresh earth as soon as they begin to push 




CUTTING AS SET OTTT. 



out new leaves, — sure sign of growth begun 
at the root end. Shade them for a few days 
after potting, and keep changing into larger 
and larger pots (just one size larger each 
time) as fast as the roots begin to crowd 
out of the hole at the bottom of the pot, de- 



140 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 



manding more room. For quick success, 
and strong-, thrifty young plants, I have 
never tried anything so sure as the saucer 
of sand. 

Another plan which I have found good 
for roses — and have seen used for oleanders 
and other hard-stemmed plants — is to fill a 
common phial with water, put the cutting 
in an inch or so deep, and then tie a string 
round the neck of the phial and hang it up 
in the warmest, sunniest place you have. 
This is a good variety for sick-room gar- 
dening. I have a little rose-bush now — • 
one of the -y^rj finest in my garden — that 
during its cutting -life hung for weeks in 
the sunshine at my window, while I sat in 
the shade. 

Cactus cuttings need a treatment of their 
own. The least bit will grow, even the 
green fruit below the flower; but before 
planting, lay them by in a dry place for a 
week or two to let them wilt a little. If 
planted at once, in their full succulence, 
they may decay. Let the pot be well drain- 



GARDENING BY M YSELF. j 4 1 

ed with cinders — you may fill it half full if 
you will — and let the earth on top have a 
good mixture of sand ; and give little or no 
water till the cuttings begin to grow. 

Most plants will -grow from cuttings of 
their shoots, — others as well, or better, from 
cuttings of their roots. You know how the 
long underground stems of your roses, 
which go wandering round and rooting as 
they go — you know how full they are of buds, 
every one ready to shoot up and become a 
stem ? You may take one of these ram- 
bling roots, cut it up into little bits an inch 
long, each with '^ eyes" like a potato set ; 
and then opening a shallow drill in some 
undisturbed, unoccupied place, you may 
sow your root -cuttings as if they were 
beans. Cover lightly, water them, let them 
alone, and they will grow to your heart's 
content. Bouvardias strike better so than 
from cuttings of their shoots ; and so does 
the sweet-scented shrub (Calycanthus) and 
many other plants. It is a good way to 
raise rose stocks for budding. A difficult 



142 GARDENING BY MYSELF, 

cutting is more sure to grow if struck 
under glass ; and we who have not sashes 
nor bell glasses, can use instead a cracked 
tumbler or a finger bowl. For our Fairy- 
land is only in results. ' 

Florists often prepare for their cuttings 
beforehand, by so trimming the stock plants 
that they will throw out a quantity of the 
right sort of shoots. For instance, with the 
verbena, Mr. Henderson advises this : ^* In 
August, cut back the old plants about six 
inches, fork up the soil and give it a dressing 
of fresh compost ; then, by October, there 
will be plenty of first-rate new shoots, just fit 
for cuttings." But it is rarely needful to do 
this in any small, private garden, for one 
seldom wishes many plants of any single 
variety, and so enough good cuttings can be 
found without special pains to provide them. 

If you have not the money to buy cheap 
statues — poor plaster figures of men and 
beasts — to set about your grounds, be 
thankful : there is no Fairyland within their 
shadow. But if you want to beautify an 



GARDENING B Y MYSELF. 



143 



unmanageable old stump, or put a spot of 
colour in some rough corner where few 
things will grow, the way is easy. A bas- 
ket stuffed with moss ; a tea-chest adorned 




MOSS BASKET. 



with pine cones or a tracery of old rope, 
will fill very creditably either sphere. They 
must be fastened securely in place, filled 
with good earth, and stocked (not over- 
stocked) with plants. Moneywort, peri- 
winkle, ivy, or an ivy geranium, to trail 
over the sides ; or failing these, nasturtiums, 
thunbergias, even petunias will do. Ver- 
benas are always pretty, and lobelias always 
in place. Stone-crop is fine and useful too, 



144 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 



helping to cover the ground between taller 
plants. In short, take what you have — here 
as elsewhere — and make the most of it. For 
a basket two feet across, Mr. Henderson 
directs seven upright plants — large and 
small — Mrs, Pollock geranium being the 
centre ; then seven drooping ones. And 
he says the basket should be lined an inch 
deep with moss to keep the water from 
washing through. 




RUSTIC BOX. 



AUGUST. 

I hear the blackbird in the corn, 

The locust in the haying ; 
And, ike the fabled hunter's horn. 

Old tunes my heart is pla3dng. 

— Whittier. 

THE vacuum which — according to the 
popular saying — '' Nature abhors," 
certainly never shews its dreary blank in 
our Fairyland. Things change, softly, — 
and the appearance of things : hyacinths 
go out and lilies come in, and then annuals 
come crowding up to fill the ranks. Tall 
perennials too look down upon the iiew 
people, — beautiful phlox heads, waving their 
abundant bloom in the fresh wind ; and lark- 
spur, blue-eyed and dignified ; and monks- 
hood and fox-glove. Cassia Maryland ica — 
a v/ild native beauty — will thrive and flower 
without stint, if transplanted to your gar- 
den ; needing plenty of room aiid giving in 
1 -. (H5) 



146 GARDENING BY MYSELF. 

return plenty of handsome yellow flowers. 
Sweet day-lilies bloom too, in these short- 
ening August days ; and grasses come into 
flower; and locusts and grasshoppers sing 
of the time of year. 

As fast as your gladiolus spikes pass out 
of bloom, cut them off, leaving the foliage 
untouched to ripen the roots. Happily for 
us, we need not sigh for the "■ novelties" at 
two and five dollars apiece. Twenty, and 
thirty, and thirty-five cents, will give what 
ought to content reasonable people. Can- 
ary — a grand bloomer, early ; with a fine 
spike of large flowers of a beautiful huffish 
yellow. John Bull — very large, creamy 
white. Mons. Vinckon, of a fine pale salmon 
tint. Berenice, another first-class, — spike 
rather open, flowers w^rj large, colour a 
rosy salmon. The new Isabella (it was quite 
new when Mr. Vick sent it to me) is more 
wonderful for its spike than for the indivi- 
dual flowers which it bears so grandly, 
though they are very fine too, — clear white, 
blazed with purple. Then there is Do?i 



GARDENING BY M YSELF. 1 4^ 

jfuajt, and Fanny Rouget, and Iinperatrice^ 
and many more ; costing little and paying 
much. 

My seedling dahlias come finely into 
bloom, despite the dry weather. The first 
one that came out, of the bouquet section, 
will I think be quite double as it gains 
strength. The next, large velvety crimson, 
is but semi-double, yet very showy. The 
third, dark red of the brick cast of colour, 
is as full and round and double as a dahlia 
can possibly be. Another has come out in 
bright clear yellow, and there are purple- 
tinted buds on the next. Certainly grow- 
ing dahlias from seed is a great idea. My 
packet of seed cost just ten cents ; and I 
have had the pleasure of raising and watch- 
ing them, and now (if one may judge by 
the beginning) they will make a grand 
show. And a certain amount of pure show 
in a garden is useful, — helping to conceal 
the blanks, helping to bridge over the in- 
tervals between one set of loved flowers 
and another. One does not love dahlias ; 



148 



GARDENING BY MYSELF, 



but I have come nearer to it with these 
seedlings than with an}^ I ever had. And 
they do their best. 




DAHLIA KINGS. 



1 beheve it is one of the characteristics 
of Fairyland, that things start up in unex- 
pected ways and places. One does not ex- 
pect to pluck kindness from a frozen gera- 
nium, nor to have interest and sympathy 



GARDENING B Y MYSELF. 



149 



spring up in the place of a slain fumitory ; 
and yet in Fairyland such things will hap- 
pen. And I could almost pardon that grub 
(were he alive) that destroyed my one adlu- 
mia some weeks ago, for the kindly letter 
of promise and the generous supply of new 
plants, which have come to me from differ- 
ent quarters. I think a flower garden (that 
one attends to oneself) does scatter other 
seeds, of yet sweeter things, in one's own 
heart ! The owners of such gardens always 
seem to have the old motto in the child's 
story, — 

" Whatever we possess, becomes doubly 
valuable when we are so happy as to share 
it with another." 

And even some of the florists who sell 
their treasures for money, cannot help 
throwing in what Mr. Henderson gravely 
calls '■'■ a few extras," for love. And so my 
garden breathes out all sorts of sweets, — of 
kindness among the rest. Here are roses 
and geraniums I never ordered ; here are 
seedling plants of some annual " novelty** 

13* 



I50 



GARDEkiNG B V MYSELF, 



which I thought I could not afford, and Mr, 
Vick somehow thought he cotild. 

Asters need careful staking and tying up 
— the slender sorts — as they grow taller and 
begin to send out their buds. Put the 
stake close to the stem of the plant, firmly 
down, and let the end and upper part of it 
be hid in the leaves and shoots so far as may 
be. Never try to fasten several branches 
with the same string ; they will always be 
crowded and look ill. Some kinds of asters 
are called strong enough to stand alone ; 
but summer gusts are very tryin-g, and 
blown-down plants are very forlorn. 

For balsams Mr. Vick recommends some 
training and trimming, as well as tying. 
For instance, pinch off all the side shoots, 
and the plant will grow into a tall straight 
cylinder of blossoms. Or for a change of 
effect, leave three or four side shoots, and 
pinch out the centre one. Either will make 
a beautiful show ; or if you prefer a more 
natural growth and shape, the balsams from 
Mr. Vick's seed are large enough and bril- 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 



151 



liant enough to bear all the pretty leafage 
that comes with them. But in a large gar- 
den it i*s well to use all sorts of different 
ways, to give a look of freshness and va- 
riety, and break up any approach to stiff- 
ness. 

When you have plenty of room, some of 
the finer daturas may well be allowed a 
place. D. Wrightii and D. humilis flava fl. 
pi. have hardly a fault, save their belong- 
ing to a bad family. You must start them 
early to have them bloom the first year. 

CEnothera Lamarckiana should have a 
place — more than one, I think — in every gar- 
den, notwithstanding its long name. It is the 
fairest thing at night-fall, and in the moon- 
light, and until the sun gets hot next day. 
Call it evening primrose, and let the rest 
of its titles go ; but it is a great improve- 
ment on the older flowers of that name. 
Its rapidly, softly opening buds are bewitch- 
ing, and you will find all your guests drawn 
<:o the primrose quarter after tea, almost as 
regularly as the evening comes. 



152 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 



Among the beauties just now in blooni; 
are some of the delicate lobelias, — the blue L. 
gracilis, and L. erinus — white-eyed, and the 
little new L. Miss Murphy. This last is like a 
soft green cushion, starred over with white. 
So it holds on its beautiful way — dropping its 
old blossoms with no mar, and putting forth 
the new with no failure — always dressed in 
the same exquisite white and green. It is 
said to be every bit as good for pot or bas- 
ket culture, as for the open garden. 

Another pretty tuft — wonderfully pretty 
considering its family — is the little French 
marigold, Tagetes signata piunila. A single 
plant in a place, — some place where you go 
for general effect and not sweet companion- 
ship and greeting, does excellent service. 

I am quite fend of the dwarf convolvulus 
(C. minor) with its honest blue eyes and 
eager endeavour to do its best. A sleepy 
little plant — that is the worst of it ; much 
given to long summer- day naps ; but in 
the cool fall weather it grows wakeful and 
bright. 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 



153 



Portulaccas too are not mid-day flowers ; 
much as they love an open, sunny situa- 
tion, and well as they stand dry weather, 
their blaze of beauty cannot bear the direct 
heat. They are all aglow at breakfast, and 
nowhere at dinner. Poor soil agrees with 
them, and a mixture of lime rubbish im- 
proves their colour. 

For gay steady bloomers through heat and 
drought, few things are better than the dwaH 
tropgeolums — T. minor. How brilliantly 
T. King of Tom Thumbs faces the wither- 
ing sunbeams, and comes off with flying 
colours ! It quite refreshes one even to see 
such endurance. How rich in contrast are 
the dark maroon blossoms of T. King 
Theodore, — not black, as was said at first — 
(and now, in some unscrupulous cata- 
logues — ) but very, very dark. One of the 
deep worsted-shades of red. Mr. Vick says 
the finer climbing tropasolums make a beau- 
tiful bed, if well pegged down ; but I have 
never tried them so myself. 

There's a temptation to everything just 



1^4 ^^ RDENING BY M YSELF. 

now to run wild and look weedy. The 
well-established position, with roots deep 
down and heads far up ; the easy, prosper- 
ous circumstances ; with frequent showers, 
and the warm August sun and the cool Au- 
gust dews — is it wonderful that even flowers 
should slightly lose their wits and their 
sense of propriety? Petunias run about, 
embracing everybod)^ and mignonnette 
gives itself up to the pleasure of living, 
and my passion- vine is clearly seeking for 
more worlds to conquer. Little reck they 
of an aster cut down last night; or of a 
fuchsia torn from its place by a wandering 
dog, to make room for his huge stolen bone : 
or of white little Miss Murphy, well-nigh 
turned out of house and home by the same 
process. Do they care that one tuft of 
phlox hangs its head in a dry corner; or 
that my pansies dwindle and grow faint in 
the sun ? Do they cheer on the little mod- 
est Silver Qiicen geranium, patiently putting 
forth one fair leaf at a time, as it gains 
strength ? Not a bit. And so my Fairy- 



GARDENING BY M YSELF. i ^ 5 

land of flowers has one thing- in common 
with the gay world of Newport and Sara- 
toga. But did you ever notice, that when 
people choose to be like each other, it is 
often in just those points where they might 
much better be different ? 

In some of the dry, hot times of weather 
that come now and then, — indeed in almost 
any weather that checks the growth of your 
plants, — there is a certain small unseen 
enemy that does great mischief — the blue 
aphis. Perhaps you may wonder how — if 
he is not to be seen — I can know that he is 
blue, — alas ! he is visible enough, onl}^ not on 
the surface. Look under ground and you 
shall find him, to your heart's great discon- 
tent. Has it happened to you to have some 
pet verbena or heliotrope suddenly stop 
sending up shoot after shoot with its crown 
of blossoms, and take to listless gazing at 
the more active world around it. You 
water, and shade, and coax — no use. There 
the plant stands, insensible, — not dying, yet 
hardly living. It is a case where there is 



1^6 GARDENING BY M YSELF. 

little danger of doing harm, therefore dig 
up the plant, mid-summer though it may be, 
and examine the roots. The first thing that 
strikes you, perhaps, as you begin to stir the 
earth, will be a crowd of ants, — hurrying, 
scudding along, and bearing off countless 
white eggs to a safer place where there is 
no earthquake. And with much indigna- 
tion you charge the failing health of your 
poor heliotrope upon them. Quite a mis- 
take : the ants are innocent. Look further, 
— take up your plant bodily and examine 
the roots ; and you will see that they are 
covered thick with minute specks — or clus- 
ters of specks — of a dull mealy blue : this 
is the blue aphis, — one of the worst of all 
the garden pests, and the hardest to deal 
with when found. Mr. Flenderson says the 
best chance of cure, is to water the plant 
for a week with tobacco water, " about the 
colour of strong tea." I have succeeded 
by taking up the plant and patiently clear- 
ing it, root by root, of its enemies. Then, 
especially if transplanted to a new place, 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 



157 



there is good hope that your pet will begin 
to grow again. But I am rarely troubled 
with the blue aphis. If ever another case 
comes to my hands, I shall try washing off 
the roots with whale-oil soap-suds. 

It is time, even now in August, to begin 
to think of winter flowers for the house, — 
deciding what we have room for, and what 
we want. Some are to be raised from seed, 
and some from cuttings, and others are to 
be pruned or repotted or taken up. It is 
too early of course for the general taking 
up of tender plants. Let them enjoy their 
freedom while they can, and make the most 
of out-door advantages for a month to come. 
But in seasons of dry weather, which do 
come now and then, I have tried a very suc- 
cessful plan with certain plants that have 
rather given way to the season, — neither 
making much show nor holding forth any 
hope of it. They are just living along till 
better times, with roots all quiet and tops 
that make no growth. Now in this slum- 
berous state a plant will feel removal mp.ch 
14 



158 GARDENING BY M YSELF. 

less than when it is in full wakeful vigour. 
Choose your opportunity, make calculations 
about the time. Is it likely that this small 
fuchsia, or geranium, or heliotrope, will 
start so suddenly and grow so fast as in any 
way to distinguish itself before you are 
close upon frost ? If not, I counsel this : 
Have good compost ready, and fresh clean 
pots (they can be soaked and scrubbed out 
when foul) ; then take up your listless plants, 
pot them carefully, water them well, and 
place them in an airy porch or piazza ; or 
if you like, after a few days shading, just 
plunge them in the very beds where they 
were before. The fresh earth, the free sup- 
ply of water, give the plant a start instead 
of a check ; and it will perhaps not drop a 
leaf, but just begin to grow and bloom and 
look lovely ; and then it is all ready for re- 
moval to the house at the approach of frost. 
Of course if the weather is dry, 3^ou must 
keep the pots well watered, wherever they 
are. 

If other plants that were turned out or 



GARDENIiYG BY M YSELF. j ^ q 

plunged in the spring, have grown straggHng 
and bare, cut them in ; that the new growth 
may be well begun before repotting time 
comes. It is bad to give a plant everything 
to do at once. 

As the season passes on, and flowers suc- 
ceed each other, take note of any perennials 
that are ill-placed, so that they may be re- 
moved in the fall. And if different mem- 
bers of the same family have got in a con- 
fused state, without due regard to height 
and colour and contrast, label them care- 
fully now while they are in bloom. It 
is very hard to remember in the spring 
which small green tuft bore crimson heads 
last summer, and which bore white, — 
w^hether the tall striped Triomphe de Twickle 
stood here, or only the low-growing, pink- 
eyed Marie le Croix. Therefore mark them 
all now. 

I am convinced that it is well, where 
you can, to have a bit of reserve ground, 
with a stcck of reserve flowers always 
read}^ for replanting. Late-s)\vn asters 



l6o GARDENING BY MYSELF. 

and phlox and balsams — that is very late — 
do not always thrive ; but you can remove 
quite a large plant from your reserve 
ground, taking it with a good spadeful of 
earth to a hole already dug in some blank 
place in the borders, and with very little 
disturbance to the roots. If the plants in 
the reserve are kept thinned out and cared 
for, so as to be strong and stout, this is easy. 
Then the borders can be always full, and 
one will not have too many petunias — 
which happened to me this year. I was 
glad to let anything cover the ground 
where grubs had been so busy. 

I have said so much about growing pa- 
tience — perhaps you will think I need recom- 
mend no other '' common things." Let joy 
and admiration — gay tropicals that live only 
in the sunshine — have it all to themselves. 
But there will be shady corners in your 
Fairyland ; and while patience makes some 
of them lovely, let meekness make others 
all sweet. 

Meekness among the flowers? — yes, you 



GARDENING BY M YSELF. 1 6 1 

will want it. For you must know that 
criticism there is much what it is elsewhere, 
and " best efforts" meet with only their 
common reward. You will find the one 
weak spot in your garden detected, the one 
failure noticed before the many successes. 
What has come from necessity will be laid 
to your choice, and your spare minutes 
must bear the blame for not doing the work 
of hours. People who have not tried, know 
so much of gardening ! — and so little. But 
bear it all meekly, — much of it is true — on 
the face. There are too many petunias, no 
matter how they came. And the young 
weeds you have been trying to get at for 
the last week, are still in sight. And some 
plants do not flourish — a painful fact enough, 
without your being asked reprovingly — 
"What is the matter with them?" Some 
people *' would give half" your stock " for 
carnations" — as you would perhaps, if you 
had the money ; and some " don't like zin- 
nias" — useful as they are when you cannot 
afford a background from the tropics ; and 
14- 



1 62 GARDENING BY M YSELF. 

others "would peg down the verbenas" — 
as you would, if you could get a minute's 
time. In one's garden as in the world, one 
must learn to be content; even when the 
blooming successes are passed by, and the 
failures picked out ; wearing there, as else- 
where, *' the ornament of a meek and quiet 
spirit, which in the sight of God is of great 
price." 



SEPTEMBER. 
" Who loves a garden, loves a greenhouse iooT- -Cowper, 

THERE is a certain quickening of 
everything in these fall days, 

" When suns grow meek, and the meek suns grow brief." 

The flowers are in utter haste to make the 
most of themselves, and to show what they 
ca7i do ; and you, half wondering why they 
could not have tried a Httle harder all sum- 
mer, instead of waiting till they were on 
the very confines of frost, watch their fall 
perfection with an enjoyment that is partly 
sad. Not much to be done for them now— 
not long can they do anything for you. But 
with the happy sequence of things in this 
world, there are the winter flow^ers already 
needing your attention. 

Many of the simple border annuals will 

(163) 



164 GARDENING BY MYSELF. 

bloom well in the house ; and the little self- 
sown seedlings of these that spring up here 
and there in the beds, make extremely nice 
plants, if taken up and potted before they 
get too large. Turn back the edges of your 
tufts of ageratum, and you will find a thrifty 
set of young ones, — easy to transplant, and 
sure to grow. So with sweet alyssum, and 
candytuft, and pinks; but mignonnette does 
not like handhng, and generally grows best 
if sown directly in the pot. Portulaccas 
may be taken up just before frost, the large 
plants ; and if carefully potted will blossom 
in the house for months. Make cuttings of 
any favorite petunias and verbenas, and also 
of geraniums : the newly-rooted plants will 
give more leafage and better chance of 
house-flowers, than the old. 

Foremost among winter flowers, for beau- 
ty and brilliancy and certainty of success, 
stand the bulbs ; and yet they are very little 
grown by people in general. Florists have 
them in plenty, and great private green- 
houses have them, a fev/ ; but the small pri- 



GA RDENING BY M YSELF. 1 6^ 

vate sitting-rooms and sunny windows of 
plain, quiet dwellings, shew almost any- 
thing else. Geraniums, oleanders, myrtles, 
pittosporums, hydrangeas; old-fashioned 
fuchsias, never promoted beyond their ori- 
ginal name of '* ear-drop;" roses — more 
bush than bloom ; even a prickly cactus or 
two, — all these you will find grouped to- 
gether. Growing as they best may in boxes, 
pitchers, unvv'holesome glazed flower-pots ; 
furnishing *' slips " now and then for a visi- 
ter, but loved b}^ the owner more for the 
care the}^ cost, and the hard struggle their 
life seems to be, (often so like her own,) than 
for any return that life can ever hope to 
make. I know she comes to have a soi't of 
tender regard for even the little bare twigs 
and leafless sprays that one by one give up 
the struggle and must be clipped off. It is 
hard to gather them up and fling them into 
the fire. They bore up against adversity so 
long, — so long lived on without the sun- 
shine, so many times were nipped by frost 
or parched with drought, or withered with 



1 66 GARDENING BY AIYSELF. 

the stove's fierce heat. When did an)'^ one 
of them have fresh earth ? Not within the 
memory of the oldest inhabitant of that 
flower stand ! 

But among all this varied assortment, how 
rarely do you find anything like a bulb. 
Callas are there sometimes, — now and then 
a stray amaryllis ; but tulips and hyacinths 
almost never. No gentle snowdrop, indoors 
or out, to ring in the spring with its green- 
tipped bells ; no gay little crocus, nor grace- 
ful scilla, nor tall polyanthus narcissus. 
To all of these I want to call your attention. 
And the fall is their planting time. 

Not quite yet, of course, — even when 
August has given the last one of her beau- 
tiful days, it is still too soon. I am not 
going to talk of the planting just now, but 
only of the choosing and buying. 

Bulbs are not dear, to begin with. Of 
course you can find lilies for five dollars a- 
piece, and expensive novelties of all sorts , 
but tulips in general range from ten to thir- 
ty cents apiece ; hyacinths, from twenty- 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 167 

five or thirty to eighty ; narcissus, from five 
to fifi:y. Named crocuses are forty cents a 
dozen, and snowdrops still less. If you do 
not care about knowing your flowers as in- 
dividuals, and so can dispense with the 
names, you will save yet more, but lose 
some pleasure. Names are a great deal to 
me, but many people care nothing about 
them. Yet how could I properly describe 
Tuba Flora, so that you would not get it all 
mixed up with Penelope, if they had no 
names? How could you order Fanny Kern- 
ble, and run no risk of getting Pigeon in- 
stead ? No disrespect to that most estim- 
able little crocus ; but Fanny Kemble is one 
that even the great pleasure-giver herself 
might be willing to have bear her name. 
Why, one comes to a sort of personal fam- 
iliar acquaintance with King Pepin and the 
Duchess of Parma, and Dorothea Blaiiche ; 
instead of their being only '' the great white 
tulip marked with red,'' and '' the smaller 
white tulip marked with less red," and '' the 
other tulip " that is just a strange glory ol 



1 58 GA RDENING BY M YSELF. 

red and yellow. I think names are a great 
institution, myself, if they do cost a little. 

But here, as with the seeds, you need a 
catalogue. There is so much more pleasure 
in choosing for oneself, than in taking any- 
body else's selection. You can get rather 
more for the money by leaving it all to your 
florist ; but you lose the fun — and fun is a 
great thing. And there is even less danger 
of mistakes among the bulbs than among 
the seeds ; for there are few difficult ones, 
and almost no shy bloomers. Bulbs expect 
to do their duty and make a show, under all 
circumstances. 

The catalogues of seeds and roots for fall 
planting are just beginning to come out. 
Mr. Vick's is already in hand ; and is about 
as bewildering (for its size) as his list of 
seeds. The first thing then, is to clear up 
and arrange your ov/n ideas. Read over 
the catalogue till you are tolerably familiar 
with its contents, — till "blush white," and 
"pure white," and "dark blue," and "por- 
celain blue," and " rose," and " red," begin 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 169 

to convey some distinct vision to your 
mind. See which names, which descriptions, 
attract you most ; for curiously enough, 
few as the words are, and unknown the 
names, they do attract — and attract differ- 
entl3^ ^^ Ami du cceiir^ tall," is quite another 
thing, you feel at once, from " Bleu mouraiit, 
!ate, low." Pass back and forth through 
this wilderness, then, until you in a measure 
know the way. After that, settle your busi- 
ness questions. 

First, how much to spend. Second, what 
proportion of your bulbs shall be for winter 
blooming in the house, and what for spring 
bloomxing out of doors. 

Next, see how many tulips can weigh 
down one hyacinth, and whether a lily can 
outweigh them both. Can you get one of 
the more costly things? Can you divert a 
little from the humbler and less costly ? 
Hard questions to answer, I know well. 
The per?uasive power of rival beauties has 
been a trouble from the days of Paris. 
down. 

15 



I/O 



GARDENING BY M YSELF. 



Let me say for jour comfort, with a good 
catalogue in your hands, you can hard] 3^ go 
wrong. Take one that is prepared by an 
honest and reliable man, and you will be al- 
most sure to go right. For the dearest 
things are not always the finest ; and a ten- 
cent Standard royal may be just as true a 
" novelty " to yoii, as a one-dollar King Pe- 
pin^ or any other ncAv beauty that has taken 
its place and price. If I could only give 
you vSome faint idea of the wonders that 
decked my garden last spring, you would 
see that these same mazes of the catalogue 
are no desert land. 

Concerning varieties of these fair winter 
flowers, there must after all be differences 
of opinion, as about other things ; and to 
really advise, therefore, might be — on the 
Avhole — to disappoint. I shall counsel noth- 
ing, but that you choose for yourselves. 
This being distinctly understood, I can with 
a clear conscience go on to tell you of some 
things I have especially enjoyed. 

I have said that bulbs are reliable, — yet 



GARDENING BY M YSELF. j >j i 

they will not all bloom, any more than all 
your seeds will come up, or all your cut- 
tings grow. Some crocus or other will take 
a distaste to the world after seeing an inch 
of it, and so droop down and fade away. 
Some snowdrop, rising higher to peer out 
through the wdndow panes, will discover 
that after all it is not spring ; and in your 
warm room its white buds will turn yellow 
and shrivel up with disappointment. Some 
enterprising tulip will run so fast, going all 
to top, that there is nothing for it but to 
tumble down and die ingloriously of mere 
want of root and patience. Such things 
will be in this typical world of flowers. 
And thus you come to look at the success- 
ful ones, the finished specimens of flower- 
hood, with a certain added gladness and ap- 
preciation. They have fully wrought out 
the beautiful plan of their life ; there are no 
more failures possible for them. 

Snowdrops, when they do well, are parti- 
cularly lovely in the house ; their pure 
white and green tinting seems like a very 



I J 2 GARDENING BY M YSELF 

bit of imprisoned spring-. And the scillas 
might be the spring sky, and the crocuses 
the spring sunshine — -that is, the yellow 
ones. Anything more exquisite than m}^ 
crocus Gold Lac last winter, could not be 
imagined of the sort. Six bright gold blos- 
soms, striped and dashed and touched with 
the richest dark brown, came up like fairy- 
rockets — two together, three together, one 
alone. And all from one small bulb. Fan- 
ny Keinble, on the other hand, following 
slowly and with dignified steps, was of a 
beauty hard to describe : the shape, the 
whiteness, the purple marking must be 
seen. 

Sir Walter Scott is another grand crocus, 
— ve?y large, beautifully striped. 

Do not try to grow the large show tulips 
in the house, but take instead the little Dice 
Van Thols, — pretty sure to do Avell, very 
sure to give pleasure. Especiall};^ (just this 
one bit of counsel) the rose-colored, — have 
that by all means. The bud comes up quite 
white. 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 



173 



" That will never be a rose-colored tulip," 
said my sister, watching it from her seat by 
the fire. But as the days went on, the little 
white tulip began to blush. It could hardly 
be (in this age of the world) for being look- 
ed at ; but blush it did ; and the sweet rosy 
colour grew and spread and deepened, till 
my tulip was all warm and flushed like a 
child awaked from sleep. 

Little gold-striped Van Thol is very good 
too, — bright and sonsy and " peart," as our 
freedmen say. 

Slowly, while all this goes on (it is last 
winter, in my study, you understand), a blue 
La Perouse hyacinth has lifted its head from 
the brown soil and the green leaves ; and 
now as one waxy bell after another takes 
colour and shape, you ask if there was ever 
anything quite so fair? Yes, Lord Anson fol- 
lows, bating no jot of his rosy pretensions ; 
and the white Emieus, and the pale yellow 
Pluie d'Or, lose nothing by having to follow 
instead of to lead. 

1 do not generally plant my finest bulbs 
15* 



174 



GARDENING B V MYSELF. 



for the house, nor often the ;z^w ones ; but 
some of those that have already bloomed in 
the garden, or young offsets. For pot or 
glass culture is said to weaken the bulb , 
and people who get but few new ones each 
year cannot afford that. I like to see them 
first in their full glory out of doors. But 
such roots as I have mentioned — not new, 
nor quite full-sized, give exquisite flowers ; 
though of course the spike is not so large. 

Then for another house beauty, have at 
least one polyanthus narcissus, — nothing 
can be much pleasanter inside your window, 
when the snow lies deeo without. Even a 
little simple narcissus — ^nch.di's Incomparable 
— brings its yellow cup absolutely full of the 
spring. 

Then anemones and ranunculus. And for 
them, I must say they are uncertain ; they 
may bloom, they may not. If everything is 
just right, they will; if everything is not, 
they won 't. That is about the state of the 
case. But if they bloom, thej^ '11 make you 
so happy that you will go on planting them 



GARDENING B V M YSELF. j y r- 

every year for the mere chance. I had a 
pot of ranunculus in bloom one winter, that 
fairly brought people in from the street. 
Such balls of colour ! such violet perfume !— 
the only flowers, I think, that I ever knew 
smell just like a violet. And as for the ane- 
mone, she is a queen ! — whether she wears 
her robe of scarlet, or of purple, or of deep- 
est violet blue. 

It is hardly fair to speak of jonquils after 
these. Yet they are both delicate and dain- 
ty, and well repay one's care. And some of 
the oxalis tribe yield great returns ; and 
cyclamens are exquisite and expensive ; 
and the amaryllis is doubly ditto, ditto ; and 
ixias, and many more are to be grown, if 
you have room, money, or opportunity. 

So much for house favourites. 

Out of doors, I may as well confess at 
once that I have too many favourites to name 
them all. You would grow tired, if I did 
not. I must name a few, and then deal only 
in general remarks. 

If your crc^cuses and blue-bells are scat- 



1 76 GARDENING BY M YSELF. 

tered about in the grass, then, to bear them 
company, plant a few Persian iris in the 
beds, — close at the front, for they are low, — • 
with a little clump of Bulbocodium vernum, 
to give another variety of colour. They 
will all be up very early. 

Then come the hyacinths — rising higher 
and higher as these first hght troops of blos- 
soms clear away, and going steadily on to 
their perfect bloom, regardless of frost or 
even snow. There is the white pyramid of 
Semiratnis, and the lovely Duchess of Bed- 
ford, and Belle Esther — her white dress pick- 
ed out with green. There is Triomphe Blan- 
dina, the great waxy bells in a flush of 
beauty; and Penelope, suffused with a mere 
thought of pink. 

Princess Royal wears her rose colour in two 
shades ; and Eendragt has flowers like a 
star ; and Tuba Flora one knows and names, 
even at a distance, so large, so beautiful. 
Norma, too is in the group, and the Duchess 
of Richmond. 

There stands OtJiello, as dark as he knows 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 



177 



how, being only a hyacinth ; surrounded with 
the softer tints* of Mimosa and Charles Dick- 
ens and Niinrod ; and these in turn with 
Blocksberg^ RicJiai'd Steele, Env:^ye, and Gi'and 
Vedette, There are the yellow Louis d' Or 
and Piet Hein among the doubles ; with the 
deep-hued beauty, RJiinoceros, and Pluie d^ 
Or and its shower of pale gold. Neither 
must I forget my pet, La Cherie — the blue- 
eyed white lady that comes almost last of 
all, shunning the crowd. 

When these exquisite tufts of clear pink 
and white and yellow and purplish blue 
(true blue is the rarest thing among flowers) 
have graced your borders and gladdened 
your heart for a while, suddenly, some 
morning, there comes a change. Off among 
or beyond blues and pinks appears a spot 
of brilliant red, a streak of flame colour, — • 
and there is tulip Brutus open to the sun. 
Claremont Gold Lac follows close, and La 
Reine and the Grand Duke of Russia are not 
far behind. The garden has been full of 
love and beauty ; but now some dash and 



I yS GARDENING BY M YSELF. 

enterprise and display, — robes of purple, 
and great cups of gold, and banners of 
every shade of red. Even the Marriage dc 
ma fille is a marriage in high life, and the 
Bride of Haarlem is clearly " a lass wi' a 
tocher." How they " fall in," as the soldiers 
say, donning their colours in hot haste. The 
purple-striped Caiman, and Yelloiv Prince, 
and Couleur Cardinal. Dorothea Blanche holds 
her ground modestly, as some people will, 
in a white dress and pink cheeks ; and King 
Pepin is roj^al in his markings. How superb 
is the Duchess of Parma, in her court dress ; 
and Rose Gris de Lin and Proserpine, are like 
two roses for colour, and Lac von Rijn quite 
lovely in its quiet lilac and white. In gen- 
eral, I think the single tuhps are much the 
finest, — much more like tuhps, and one pre- 
fers to have a flower look like itself; yet 
there ai e great beauties among the doubles, 
with over-skirts extremely rich and bouf- 
fants. Besides some that I have named, 
Lncarnat Gris de Lin and Conqueror could 
hardly be improved. 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. lyg 

Then there are the parrot tulips — gay, 
rich, almost flaanting- — yet not quite ; with 
cups too large to be held up ; and last of all, 
the Show Tulips, as the florists call them ; 
late, tall, and of more regular beauty than 
most of the earl}^ kinds. No one who buys 
Cicero, or the Duchess of Brunswick, will 
think his money ill spent. 

Next in order of blooming, are my favour- 
ite hardy gladioluses (I follow '■' Agricultur- 
ist " authority in my plural) — by no means 
to be compared with the late-flowering 
French hybrids, and yet giving wonderfully 
pretty bloom, and plenty of it, long before 
their French cousins begin their toilet. 
Plant them in the autumn, and take the 
benefit of their cheapness. You can get 
them for eight or ten cents apiece. 

Lilies come next, and they too should be 
planted in the fall. 

But here I bethink me of my promise not 
to mention everything : remembering too 
that there are still left some things Avhich I 
ought not to pass hy. 



1 80 GARDENING BY M YSELF. 

Iris, with its rich peculiar blossoms ; and 
Crown [mperial — gay but not sweet ; and 
the little Anomatheca cruenta, and all the 
rest of your catalogue ! 

Get everything you can, and especiall}^ 
all the Hlies ; and make sure that you have 
at least one of the old Liliuin candidiini. So 
old that it is rare ; sweet, elegant, spotless : 
worth dollars to you, though but fifteen 
cents to the florist. 

Between the time when your list is finish- 
ed, and with a sigh of relief that tells how 
great the perplexity has been 3^ou make a 
fair copy of the order and send it off, chang- 
ing the possible into the inevitable, — be- 
tween that time and the delicious minute 
when the bulbs arrive, each wrapped in its 
own soft labelled paper, and the " inevitable " 
order is changed back again into a box full 
of wonderful possibilities — to begin once 
more — between those two bits of time there 
is much to do. Of course you will question 
now and then with yourself, as to whether 
the box may arrive '^to-day;" but, mean- 



GARDENING BY M YSELF. 1 8 T 

time you will not forget that there are other 
things in the world besides bulbs. Do 3'ou 
want columbines for next year, or holly- 
hocks, or fox-glove, carnations, sweet wil- 
ham, or perennial poppies? Then sow them 
now. These should all be planted early, for 
if the young seedlings are not well estab- 
lished before winter, they will surely winter- 
kill. For larkspur and some other hardy 
annuals, it is enough if the seeds are in the 
ground any time before very cold weather. 
They will lie over till spring. Of course it 
may happen, that all your seeds for fall sow- 
ing are in the bulb box — another reason for 
ordering that early. 



OCTOBER. 
** He hath made everything beautiful in his t me/* 

— ECCLES. 3 II. 

ryiHIS is so true, and the ever recurring 
JL freshness of the beauty is so new, so 
varied, that we are in a state of perpetual 
wonder as if we had nev^er seen it all be- 
fore. This sky is not the sky of June, but 
one look into its intense blue makes you 
content with the change ; and the river is 
dancing with sparkles and flecked with joy- 
ous white ; and the wind — 

'* Ay, thou art welcome, Heaven's delicious breath, 
When woods begin to wear the crimson leaf. 

This by day, — but there come other 
things by night. Have everything ready, 
so that you can remove tender plants into 
the house at a moment's notice ; when some 

(187,) 



GARDENING B V M YSELF. j 3 3 

crispiness of the evening air tells of frost. 
Hardy plants that may yet need winter 
protection, need nothing now. The later 
they are covered, the better; for they might 
as well be frozen as smothered, and smoth- 
ered they will assuredly be if covered too 
early. The end of November is time enough 
for that. 

But make all preparations now, of every 
kind. Gather the leaves as they fall into 
some secure corner ; pile up your brush 
near at hand, and prepare soil and pots and 
labels. Make all your fall sowings in the 
reserve ground if possible, instead of the 
regular beds. Most of the seedlings are 
easily transplanted, and the beds are left 
free for the late or early digging — late 
and early, if you can give it — which is so 
important to the summer display. One of 
my beds suffered sadly this year in the dry 
weather, because, being full of bulbs, it had 
but a slight spring dressing; and so the 
ground hardened and dried as it never 
should. For this same reason, it is well, 



1 84 GARDENING B Y M YSELF. 

where you can, to have certain beds just 
set apart for bulbs ; and then you can keep 
back some of your pot plants to fill them up 
when the bulb floAvers have passed away. 

For planting the bulbs you need only a 
good garden soil, well enriched with very 
rotten manure from the cow-yard, and soft- 
ened and lightened with sand and leaf- 
mould if it is too stiff. It is also very im- 
portant that the bed should be well drained ; 
therefore never on any account plant bulbs 
or tubers where the water will stand at any 
time. 

The same sort of soil may be used for bulbs 
in pots ; though if you want the very best 
results (according to Mr. Henderson), you 
should make for them a compost of decay- 
ed turfy loam, river sand, rotted manure 
and leaf-mould, well mixed together. Mr. 
Vick says where the soil is stiff, it is well to 
give each separate bulb a little bed of pure 
sand to rest in. But we are not come to 
the planting yet ; only I would say, have all 
your materials ready. The soil and the 



GARDENING B Y M YSELF. i g 5 

sand and the pots ; the boxes, if they are to 
go in boxes ; the moss, if they are to be 
planted in moss. Shall I go further, and say, 
the turnip, if — ? '' No ; I most earnestly 
hope that everybody who has a turnip will 
put it to a more fitting use. Fancy content- 
ing oneself with a hoUowed-out turnip or 
carrot for a hanging-basket, while there was 
a yard of wire to be bought for two cents, 
or a handful of moss to be had for the gath- 
ering, or an old box in the world that one 
could cover Avith pine cones and bark ! If 
the ready-made pretty things are not at- 
tainable, set your wits to work and make 
still prettier. The stems of wild grape 
vines are fine twisting material, and bits of 
old hollow branches, or old knot-holes with 
their frame- work, may be cut and trimmed 
and fashioned into the daintiest bulb-hold- 
ers. Look about you in your walks, — gath- 
er conch shells by the seashore, if your path 
lies there ; or build up smaller shells and 
bright-hued pebbles into handsome con- 
glomerates of what shape you like. Then 
16^ 



1 86 GARDENING BY MYSELF. 

exercise your taste in suiting the bulb to 
the setting. Let nothing too elaborate spoil 
the simple beauty of crocuses and snow- 
drops ; and give tulips a holder which shall 
be dark and rich rather than gay. I believe, 
for me, there is nothing so pleasant as the 
plain red flower-pot, with its fresh brown 
earth, for any house plant, — making no pre- 
tensions, it seems to accomplish the more ; 
yet I have enjoyed a hyacinth in a glass very 
much, and some of the new crocus glasses 
are extremely pretty. As for porcupines, 
and beehives, and all the other enormities 
to which crocuses are sometimes condemn- 
ed, I think they are just — worse than tur- 
nips ! Could I say more ? 

As soon as your dahlia stalks are touched 
with the frost, cut them down ; and either 
take up the roots at once, or leave them 
(some say) to ripen for a week. Store them 
in dry sand, and keep them dry and warm. 
Not in a Jiot place, of course, but more than 
just above freezing; and so with your glad- 
iolus roots. Take up the cannas rather ear- 



GARDENING B Y MYSELF. i g/ 

ly, for too much frost on their leaves is said 
to affect the root, and store them also in 
sand. Cannas will winter well in a good 
dry cellar, but tuberoses do best with the 
dahlias and gladioluses. Not the old tube- 
rose roots, remember ; but the offsets, which 
will grow to a flowering size in two seasons. 
Datura roots too ma}^ be kept in sand. 
Most of the varieties are too tender for the 
winter outside. 

As the days turn cool, and the hope of 
open air results grows less and less, secure 
all you can to vary the colour and fragrance 
among your window plants. Stocks that 
have not yet bloomed will flower well in 
the house ; and a tard}^ young balsam, pot- 
ted and trained to a single stem, will be 
very handsome. So with some of the 
d .varf chrysanthemums, — though they 
should be left till the last minute. Try all 
sorts of experiments, — but try them careful- 
ly, and note the results. Excellent discov- 
eries are made in just this way. 

Another thing is to be noted just now. 



1 8 8 ^^ RDENING BY M YSELF. 

For tnose whose garden-room — and some 
other things too — is hmited, it is very im- 
portant to have especially those flowers 
that bloom all the time. In a great place, if 
a whole flower bed is oat of bloom you hard- 
ly notice it, for the many that are in. But 
with us it is not so. Notice, therefore, as 
the season flies along, what blossoms ac- 
company it, wdiat others are scattered in its 
flight. Not everything will bear the frosts 
and cool winds even of October, and those 
that do are very precious. 

First here, as elsewhere, come the roses — 
small Washingtons in their way, and every- 
where taking the lead ; in sunshine, in cloud, 
in loving favour. Yet not all the roses. Lu- 
dovic Careau has long been flowerless, and Pio 
Nono shows not even a bud, and Cainille de 
Rohan reserves its brilliance for the glow of 
summer days. But juvSt look at my perpet- 
ual moss Salet. Two or three exquisite 
full-bloom roses, as pink as June and almost 
as sweet, with large scattered buds here 
and there, as yet muffled in their mossy 



GARDENING BY MYSELF, 



189 



cal^^x. Agrippma, the brilliant little Bengal, 
offers both buds and blossoms with calm 
unvarying regularity, very regardless of 
weather; and Mine. Bosanqiiefs paler face 
is seldom absent. Hermosa, too, shows deep 
spots of colour. Now^ look at Sombricl. 
Long nev/ shoots, thick set with their deep 
green leaves ; and bearing high in air a 
perfect array of buds, in every stage of 
growth, and two open roses. But oh ! such 
roses ! Translucent white, into which there 
has somehow crept a thought of colour — 
what colour, you cannot tell. The whole so 
waxy and pure and moulded, that you are 
ready to repeat the comical remark once 
made by a greenhouse visitor, and say thej^ 
are **just like artificial flowers." These do 
look "just like wax," only with a differ- 
ence, — the difference between life and 
death, the false and the true. Take one of 
Soinbrier s breaths of fragrance, and you 
will debate the wax question no longer. 

A beauty of another style is Souvenir de 
Malmaison with buds that are absolutely 



I go GARDENING BY MYSELF. 

huge ; three, four, and five of them crown- 
ing the stalk, disdaining any minghng with 
mere green leaves. And this great pink cup, 
almost as regular as porcelain ones and well 
nigh as deep, what is it like ? What, but a 
Malmaison rose? The clear pink hue, the 
assured air of a queen ; the dainty, coquet- 
tish air of a rose, — it is a superb flush and 
blood beauty. Not etherial, not spirituelle^ 
like Sombriel, the Malmaison has never 
learned — and does not believe — that 

" II faut souffrir, pour etre belle." 

There is nothing like roses, even for Octo- 
ber. I have counted (some years ago, when 
my garden was better filled than it is just 
now) two hundred roses in their perfection, 
on my own bushes, at one time, — and that 
time an October morning. And this did not 
include the over-blown roses, nor the half- 
open buds. 

Coming down from these heights, it is 
pleasant to see how many of the intrinsical- 
ly fine things, of humbler pretensions, yet 



GARDENING BY M YSELF. i g i 

hold their own. Mignonnette, always lovely 
and always sure, now outdoes itself; and 
sweet alyssum makes a small white wilder- 
ness that is very sweet indeed. And pinks 
show w^hite stars, and crimson stars, and 
stars of all shades ; and verbenas bloom 
steadily on. Pansies take breath after the 
summer heats, and look out upon the cool- 
ing- world with wide open eyes and expan- 
sive faces. 

There is a sort of sadness in the late 
bloom of the less hardy things, — the tube- 
roses, dahlias, and zinnias, which are so gay 
to-day and may be cut down to-night. One 
turns from them to the chrysanthemums, just 
coming out, defying the frost. Ah, Grub ! — • 
if you had only not eaten up my one Japan- 
ese specimen last spring ! However, Mr. 
Vick's wise counsel to rejoice over the flow- 
ers that live, rather than to mourn over those 
that die, is strictly in place here. Have I 
not Gloria Mundi, already answering to its 
name ; and Eve, softly opening out its paler 
tints ; with Dr. Brook's gay orange, and Ful^ 



1^2 GARDENING BY MYSELF. 

gidiims deep red, and SiiowbaWs perfect 
white. I have seen this last loaded with its 
beautifully incurved, globe-shaped blossoms, 
and these in turn bearing a spotless weight 
of early snow, themselves almost as feathery 
and white. Chrysanthemums are just grand 
whenever the season is long enough to give 
them a chance. They thrive better, I think, 
for a light covering of brush or leaves dur- 
ing the winter months : not that they are 
not quite hardy ; but this seems to secure an 
early start in the spring, and for plants that 
may be called to a neck-and-neck race with 
the frost, an early start is very desirable. 

Among faithful, sure bloomers at this sea- 
son, I must not forget my lovely Louicera 
Halliana: perfectly hardy, a cloud of white 
sweetness in the early season, and from then 
until now never without a good show of its 
graceful blossoms. I got one two or three 
years ago from Mr. B. M. Watson (who I 
believe first introduced it in this country), 
and have had constant comfort in it ever 
since. 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 



193 



When your bulbs arrive, choose out first 
those that are to be for winter pleasure in- 
doors. These must be first planted. And 
if you have others of your own, from last 
year, it is well to look them over carefully, 
and set aside such as already show starting 
roots or shoots. These are early kinds, and 
will probably give early flowers in the 
house. 

You may grow these pretty things in al- 
most any way, and " with gratifying re- 
sults." So florists will tell you, and they 
ought to know. Hyacinths, crocuses, 
snowdrops, scillas, narcissus, will consent 
to live and flourish in anything, for a sin- 
gle winter. You may take moss, or sand, 
or earth, or water ; you may use (it is not 
always choose) a flower-pot or an earthen 
bowl, a glass, a wire basket, an old box, or 
a noseless pitcher; and (if certain other 
conditions are met) your bulb will do its 
duty and rise superior to all surrounding 
circumstances. But remember that moss 
and sand must be kept moist, with even 
17 



1 94 GARDENING BY M YSELF. 

more care than earth ; and earth must be 
light and rich ; and the water in your bulb 
glasses must be always sweet and fresh. 
Not by changing it every week, as some 
direct, which is needless trouble and endan- 
gers the long roots ; only sprinkle the wa- 
ter at first (after the glass is filled) with fine 
powdered charcoal. It will slowly settle 
to the bottom of the glass, in an unnoticea- 
ble thin layer, and the water will never 
grow impure. All you have to do, is to 
add a little more from time to time. 

All florists (I believe) say that dark glass- 
es are the best, giving the roots a shadow 
at least of their natural seclusion. Fill the 
glasses with soft water up to the neck, just 
so high that the bulb can touch it, and no 
more. 

Planting in moss or sand I have never 
tried, having a strange fancy for seeing the 
bulbs in as natural a state as possible; but 
the authorities give this simple direction: 
If you plant in a bowl or vase having no 
drainage hole at the bottom, cleanse the 



GARDENING BY M YSE LF. j q^ 

moss well before planting : if a common 
flower-pot is used, this is not needful. Lay 
the moss lightly in, arrange your bulbs as 
you wish, and cover with more moss. 

Sand (sea-sand) must be washed to ^^t 
rid of the salt ; and river sand should be 
dried in the oven, to kill all animal hfe that 
may be there. The tiny shell fish of our 
river shore, will sometimes try the taste of 
land plants if they have a chance. Some 
planters mask the surface of the sand with 
moss, after the bulbs are in ; others like the 
contrast of the green leaves and silvery 
soil. But however you plant, the earth or 
moss or sand must be thoroughly watered 
at once ; and then the pots and boxes and 
glasses must be set away in a cool dark 
room or cellar, where there is neither frost, 
nor sunshine, nor mice. 

Florists generally advise the planting of 
several bulbs in the same pot. I can only 
say that with me it does not work well. 
One will bloom, and another will lan- 
guish, — three gay tulips, and one dying 



196 



GARDENING B V MYSELF. 



or dead, — two snowdrops up, and the third 
refusing to follow ; or one crocus in bud, 
and the other quite past its prime. If they are 
in separate pots, the failures can be remov- 
ed, and the rest closed in to hide the blank. 
Even for a great window-box I think I 
should put all the bulbs in pots. But of 
course that is a matter of fancy. 

If you have no good place in the house 
for your bulbs at first, set a large box or 
open frame in the garden, on a dry walk or 
a bed of coal ashes, place your pots on this, 
and fill in between them with coal ashes or 
tan. Then cover the frame with boards, or 
spread several inches of dry leaves, sand, or 
tan over the pots. Frost will not reach 
them for a long time here, and in ordinary 
seasons they need not be stirred before the 
middle of November. 

If you are impatient, and set your bulbs 
at once in the light, insisting that they 
should enact Young America, and bloom 
before taking root, do you know what you 
will have ? Something about as valuable as 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 



197 



a basket of neglected onions, with slim 
green shoots a foot long ! 

All, or almost all, advice about flowers, 
must be received with a certain degree of 
caution and mixed with a few grains of good 
sense before using. Fifty miles off, the mid- 
dle of October is quite another time of year 
from our October I5.th ; and a wet clay soil, 
and a dry sandy one, make changes of sea- 
son and condition that must by no means be 
disregarded. While one place is revelling 
in the golden glory of the fall, another is al- 
ready fast in the chains of winter ; and the 
late weeks of November, which find my 
garden in perfect working order, in another 
region come down upon an unmanageable 
wilderness of wet or frozen clay. It is true 
we prepare the soil for our bulbs, helping 
them to forget these differences as far as 
may be. But if we forget them, there will 
be failures of some sort. 

A writer in one of the late papers says : 
" The earlier bulbs are planted in this month 
(October) the better." Now this is not al- 
17* 



I q8 garden [ng by m yself. 

ways true. You must study your climate. 
They should be planted in time to have a 
good root-growth before cold weather, but 
not so early that the green shoot will begin 
to push its way ; nor so they will be up too 
soon in the spring, before the covering can 
be safely taken off You do not want your 
beauties working their way through the 
leaf blanket, and hanging their pretty heads 
beneath the weight of driving snow. The 
last of October, or early November, are my 
planting times here on the Hudson; and 
from September to December are the ex- 
treme limits in all winter-having places. 
But take notice, the bulbs must be planted 
in some part of that time ; you cannot wait 
till spring. Florists say, that orders are sent 
for tulips and hyacinths just when they are 
ready to bloom ! You must plant in the 
fall, with few exceptions. It is so hard for 
any but a practiced florist, having all facili- 
ties, to keep safely such kinds as may be 
kept for spring planting, that ordinary peo- 
ple had better not try. Lilies grow mouldy, 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 



199 



and anemones dry awa}^ to powder ; all that 
you cannot plant this fall, let a florist keep 
for you till spring. If you cannot get 
them, you will at least not^lose your money. 

It is strange work to plant bulbs. Beau- 
tiful work, but strange; having a certain 
weird significance and likeness to greater 
things. Seeds are another matter. A few 
days, a week or two at most, brings up 
their fresh growth ; and even in this uncer- 
tain world we do all look ahead so far as 
that. It is the gentle time of year, too, 
when everything is tending towards sun- 
shine and blossom and fruit. They are but 
spring ventures. But for our bulbs ! — Sum- 
mer is behind them when they are planted, 
and before them stretch the long, long win. 
try months of ice and snov/, — the months of 
absent or tuneless birds, of half-hardy things 
that are dying, and tender things that are 
quite dead. The very year is fading when 
they are laid for their quiet sleep. 

The seeds spring up and grow we know- 
not how ; so swiftly, so suddenly, with 



200 GARDENING B V MYSELF. 

such a full burst of life. But the bulbs once 
planted, lying inches deep beyond the sun- 
light, lie still and give no sign. The labels 
set here and there in the fresh smooth earth, 
might each one bear the inscription : " Wait." 
How long? And whose eyes shall sec 
the bed in its glory, when the winter is 
over and gone ? We know not. And so as 
I plant my bulbs, planning and mapping 
out, laying them carefully each in its place, 
there come through my heart these words: 
''Who shall live when God doeth this?" 
I cannot tell. But of that other resurrec- 
tion I know ; though the waiting be long 
and desolate and wintry ; I shall not miss 
the glory of that spring. " For them which 
sleep in Jesus will God bring with him." 



N O V E M B E I? . 

Our leaves are shaken from the tree, 

And hopes laid low, 
That after our spring nurslings, we 

May long to go. 

— Gerald Massey. 

u A CHRISTIAN," says some old quaint 
/^ writer, " must be very careful to 
keep his spirits up when his condition in 
the Avorld goes down." The words came 
to me this morning, when I thought of the 
present condition of things in my Fairyland. 
There is no time, the season through, when 
the garden should take such heed to its 
personal appearance as now. The spring 
promise makes you foiget much; the sum- 
mer fulness makes you overlook more. 
^YQw the blankness of winter brings its ex- 
cuse, for what can you expect then? But 

the fall is a time of struggle and change 

(201) 



202 GARDENING BY M YSELF. 

and new relations, which may be very rich, 
or will be very desolate. 

Leave it to itself; let the weeds flourish 
and the flowers blow down ; let the frost- 
bitten plants lean hopelessly upon their 
hardier neighbours, and the fallen leaves 
cover the ground with their damp mat; 
and your garden will be dreary with the 
forlornness of unblessed sorrow. Loss and 
disappointment and death have taken so 
much, let them even have the whole ! — 

Ah that is a w^onderful mistake, in either 
case. 

Look around, and see what the frost has 
spared. Make the most of it, cherish it. 
Gather away the wreck and rubbish of 
dead associations and useless regrets ; espe- 
cially unearth the weeds — those '' roots of 
bitterness" which spring up but to trouble 
and defile. Remove with a smooth clean cut 
the broken branches, the hanging shreds of 
summer glory ; clip off the dry flowers that 
blossomed when so much else was fair; and 
look bravely at the ground which God has 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 203 

cleared. There is always work for you 
to do. 

It is astonishing how much can be done, — 
what transformations spring up under the 
wise hand of the fall gardener. Whole beds 
of mignonette, that were choked with de- 
caying leaves, shine out and bloom with 
more than summer fragrance. Late roses, 
blown from their support, and trailing their 
deUcate buds in soil and ruin, once lifted up 
and bound securely, shew tear- washed faces 
as lovely as an}^ June-kissed darling of them 
all. 

The heartsease revels in the cooler, fresher 
winds, with eyes so large and happy and 
quiet, that you cannot even miss the gay 
gladiolus and the dainty tuberose that once 
lived near by. And though zinnias are 
withered, and balsams are brown, and a 
hundred little beauties of the summer are 
sent into long, cold exile, yet there are 
white wreaths on the honeysuckle, and a 
few glowing pinks, w^hile chrysanthemums 
are in their glory. How strong they look ! 



204 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 



how warm in their bright colours ! Even 
the pale and white-robed ones lift up brave 
faces to the wind. And if there is a sigh 
and a thought in your heart for the more 
delicate spring blossoms, that decked the 
w^orld 

" When feelings were young and the world was new," 

still give thanks for these ; for the glory of 
work and character and endurance, when 
the flush and promise of first things has 
passed away. 

You will find it sweet work to make the 
most of these late beauties ; training them 
up, displaying them to the sun. For chrys- 
anthemums, one or two barrel hoops, rest- 
ing on crotched sticks, make a very good 
support. Have hoops enough, and then 
let the flower stems lie loosely and at 
ease They should not be tied up stiffly, 
with stems bound close together so as to 
crowd the flowers. 

In the house, keep all your potted plants 
as cool as possible. They have but just 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 



205 



come from the fresh air, and may easily 
" get a headache" — as Dr. Kane and 
some other people used to tent life have 
done, when first obliged to sleep indoors 
again. 

There are something less than a thousand 
and one ways recommended for the plant- 
ing of your hardy bulbs. . In ribband lines 
of different colours ; in separate clumps 
of one ; in regular one, two, three order, 
wherein red, yellow, blue and white follow 
each other without even a chance of escape : 
all these and many more are directed, ad- 
vised, and practised. A general helter- 
skelter style finds favour with some, and also 
the expensive fashion of having whole beds 
filled with a single colour and a single name. 
This may do well in great places, but I con- 
fess I should think the passed Ami du Coeur 
bed would look mournful, with the La Ciler- 
ies not yet in bud. However, where \vays 
are so many, and opinions so countless, it is 
a doubtful matter to put forth one's ov/n. 
Indeed for the great bulb owners, who have 
18 



2o6 GARDENING BY MYSELF. 

everything and can do anything, I have 
nothing to say. If they can plant Tuba 
Flora broadcast, and have a half acre of 
named crocuses, and an avenue of Lilium 
auratum, they may be safely left to their 
own devices. But we, with just a handful 
of beauties, how shall we dispose them to 
the best advantage ? 

I will tell you some rules that have 
wrought fine effects in my own garden. 

First, not planting too many together. 
For it is not a mere grand sweep of colour 
that we small florists want, but to study 
and enjoy the special individual plant. Not 
broad waves and stripes of tinted glory, a 
part of the great whole of our country 
seat ; but groups of lovely, fragrant tufts 
and bells, each 0:13 a friend, each known by 
sight; making home more like home, and 
helping with their quiet grace to soothe 
and hush and charm away the SQiall rough- 
nesses and weary breaths that come in the 
course of one's everyday life. A few 
hyacinths together will do this far better 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 20/ 

than a crowd. Therefore plant in small 
groups. 

But next, make your groups different. 
Have no stiff* arrangement of colours, yet 
have an arrangement. You will find a 
grouping of pink and white hyacinths quite 
delicious in its harmony and contrast ; while 
the dark blues go excellently well with the 
pale yellow and lemon tints. The reds and 
paler blues are rich together; or the me- 
dium blues with the blush whites ; and so 
on. You will find work enough for your 
fancy, if you give it a chance. 

It rarely has a good effect to mix different 
sorts of bulbs in the same clump. The 
beauty of tulips, for instance, is so unlike 
that of hyacinths that they just put each 
other out. You lose the clear tints of the 
one, and the gay, dashing hues of the other. 
Snowdrops are too pale to stand among 
crocuses, and the Persian iris gets small 
credit for its lovely markings, if planted 
near the deep blue scilla or the bright 
purple bulbocodium. Give each sort a 



2o8 GARDENING BY MYSELF. 

setting of space and brown earth, if you 
can ; and then you may pass from group to 
group with ever new refreshment and de- 
light. 

Another thing must be borne in mind. 
Some of your hyacinths are " tall," others 
^' low ;" some are marked " early," and some 
bloom late. Now you want to have the 
clumps always symmetrical and shapely ; 
therefore study the placing of your bulbs 
from this new point of view. If all the 
early ones are at one side, if all the tall 
ones are in front, it is easy to see that the 
effect will not be good. I generally give 
the matter a good deal of study. 

When the ground is all prepared, and 
planting day has come, choose from your 
basket the bulbs for your first clump, and 
lay them out in order upon the bed — if 
hyacinths, six or eight inches apart, and 
tulips a little less, and crocuses not more 
than three. Then consider the arrange- 
ment, keeping each bulb in its labelled 
wrapper until you are ready to plant. And 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 



209 



as fast as you plant each one, set by it a 
wood label with the name. Flyacinths 
should be set at least four inches deep, lilies 
somewhat more — say five or six ; and smaller 
bulbs somewhat less. Two inches is depth 
enough for a crocus. Lilies (the hardy 
ones) should be placed where they can be 
left several years without stirring, and cro- 
cuses and snowdrops will also thrive best 
to be let alone. Tulips and hyacinths do 
better taken up. 

As the frost will sometimes throw out 
your labels, and as it is also possible that 
some of them may be raked off with the 
covering of the bed in spring, I have found 
it save trouble to make a sort of map of 
each bed and group ; numbering each bulb 
on my list, and writing down the numbers 
in their proper place on my map ; so that 
if a label is missing, I shall still know 
what bulb was planted in that place. 
Until you have learned to know all 
your pets by name, it is a very good 
way. After planting, smooth the earth 
18* 



2 1 o GARDENING BY M YSELF. 

neatly down, but put no covering on as 
yet. 

I see it said by some advisers that it is not 
worth while to try to save your own bulbs. 
Take the good of them this year, then throw 
them away and buy more, for they will 
never be good for anything again. This is 
a mistake. Tuberoses indeed will not 
bloom a second season, unless in their be- 
loved Italian climate ; but all other bulbs 
that I have ever tried will live and flower 
admirably from year to year. If any of 
them see fit to abdicate at the summer's end, 
they always leave a successor so like them- 
selves that you cannot tell the difference. 

Much depends, of course, upon the care 
you take. The first spike of blossoms you 
have from a new bulb, is due, somebody 
says, to other care than yours. A bulb 
makes most of its preparations a year before- 
hand. But while this is true in a measure, 
its bloom of next year depends — by the 
same rule — upon you. Cultivate carelessly 
and you may well fling away your roots at 



GARDENING BY M YSELF. 2 1 1 

the year's end. But if you plant right and 
manage right ; if when the red and blue 
glory of the flowers is departed you giv^e 
the green leaves their turn ; fostering them 
with no less care, and giving them every 
facility for perfecting their growth, that the 
bulb also may mature and ripen ; then you 
will have a rich reward for your trouble 
and patience. Then )^ou will find (as I have 
done) your tulip roots growing larger in- 
stead of smaller, from 3^ear to year. You 
will find none to buy so large, none more 
solid. Then, besides the little handful which 
you can afford to get new every fall, you 
will soon have roots b}^ the basket, — enough 
to fill all your spare places, and with some 
to bestow upon rooms and gardens more 
vacant, perhaps, than yours have ever been. 
This is a great pleasure : to place a single 
tuft of sweetness in a sick room ; to fur- 
nish a bright glow of beauty for a room full 
of nothing but toil ; a spot of freshness for 
weary eyes ; a reminder of the Lord's good 
hand for hearts bowed down with sadness. 



212 ^^ RDENING BY M YSELF. 

No one knows but those who have been too 
poor to buy one hyacinth, what even one 
hyacinth can do. 

Therefore, for every reason, take the best 
care of your bulbs. Save even the little off- 
sets. Well planted and cared for, they will 
make fine flowering roots in a year cr two, 
and may yield a good deal even before that. 
I have got much pleasure from them in this 
way : If mixed in among the full grown 
bulbs, they would look insignificant ; there- 
fore I plant them by themselves, as they 
come, with not much arranging, but in good 
soil and at proper distances. And they 
make a sort of small world by themselves. 
Little spikes and little bulbs, but the clear- 
est, fairest colours ; not looking much like 
hyacinths, nor much like anything else, un- 
less a fairy garden. Planted so, you may 
fill a bed with them, or let them be one of 
the features in a large bed, — a lovely little 
variety, a cluster of baby blooms. Or 
they will make a pretty edging to a bor- 
der. Only give them all care, treat them 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 



213 



with all respect, and they will pay you 
well. 

There are many common garden bulbs 
and tubers, quite hardy, that may be left un- 
stirred from year to year — indeed do best 
so. The daffodil, of blessed childhood me- 
mory, with the Poet's 7iarcissus and Orange 
Phonis of the same family, and Double 
White and Incomparable. Then there are 
peonies — great masses of colour or of white- 
ness ; and dicentra ; and amaryllis longi- 
flora, a very fine hardy bulb. In fact, / 
always want every thing I can get ! — and 
some that I can not. 



DECEMBER. 

These naked shoots, 
Barren aslances, amc^ng which the wind 
Makes wintr}' music, sighing as it goes, 
Shall put their gracefxil foliage on again, 
And more aspiring, and with ampler spread, 
Shall boast new charms, and more than they have 
lost. — Cozuper. 

IT is one of the happy things in this fitful 
human hfe, that we are all so ready to 
bridge over the times and places that seem 
empty and without interest. Once let the 
present lose relish, and straightway we 
stretch out our hands to grasp tlie future, 
and taste its sweets by anticipation. So 
extremes meet, and the echo of departing 
wheels gives place to the faint roll of the 
approaching, and the days of loss pass 
gently on into days of hope. 

Winter days are not often called by that 
(214) 



GARDENING BY M YSELF. 2 1 5 

name ; yet they are days of patient waiting, 
" and if we hope for that we see not, then 
do we with patience wait for it." 

Patient waiting, — yes, that is it. I had 
left my garden in the bright, brave glory 
of November ; I came back to find it con- 
quered, frost-bound, white with December's 
snow. Not a bud, not a blossom ; not even 
the cheery face of one of my pansies to wel- 
come me home. Where are they all? 
Waiting. Even so must I wait, yet not in 
uncertainty. For *^ while the earth re- 
maineth, seed-time and harvest, and cold 
and heat, and summer and winter, and day 
and night, shall not cease." I know that 
the shrivelled leaves will have fair, fresh, 
successors. I know that hid away in the 
deep brown earth my tulips and hyacinths 
are safe ; perfecting their roots, preparing 
for a glorious blooming by and by. 

All tender things that need protection 
should have it before the ground freezes to 
any depth ; yet put it on as late as possible. 
The bulb beds need five or six inches of 



2 1 6 GARDENING BY M YSELF. 

dry leaves, if you can get them ; if not, use 
litter or straw or some such substitute. 
Spread the leaves smoothly, and keep in 
place with a layer of light brush. Tender 
roses may be pegged down and sheltered 
with an arched roof of sods ; or common 
earth will answer nearly as well, unless the 
soil be stiff and full of clay. I think many 
dwarf kinds keep better if they are pruned 
close before covering; but it is easy to protect 
the whole bush if you open a slight trench 
at one side, and fasten the branches down in 
that. If the bush is too tall to lay down, 
a cone of straw or cedar brush will protect 
it well. 

Hardy perennials — pinks, chrysanthe- 
mums, lilies, and such like, will repay the 
trouble of covering them too ; but a very 
slight dressing of litter or leaves is quite 
enough. 

The garden will look pretty then, in its 
winter dress, when all this is done; and 
under their double blanket of leaves and 
snow, the roses and lilies will bide their 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 



217 



time, and jour bulbs wait safely for the 
spring. 

It is less easy to take care of the indoor 
treasures, — they are so easily killed with 
kindness. Of course they must be kept 
from frost ; and a few tender ones, such as 
coleus and achyranthus, like a really warm 
room. But most common plants winter 
best in a dreamy state of inaction, unless 
they can have the regulated heat and moist 
air of a greenhouse. Put geraniums and 
fuchsias and roses and even lantanas, in a 
frost-proof room or cellar, giving them little 
water if they have little light, and they will 
" worry through " the winter somehow, and 
come out all ready for pruning and planting 
in the spring. If you have more zonale 
geraniums than you know what to do with, 
set them close together in an old box, pack- 
ing it quite full, and then fill in between 
with earth. Or you may hang them up in 
your cellar, heads down, with no earth 
within sight, and they will contrive to live 
along even so. 



2 1 8 GARDENING BY M YSELF. 

Examine all your house bulbs from time 
to time; and when the long roots come 
near the bottom of the glasses, and the 
bulbs in pots begin to get an impatient 
look about the tips of their green or white 
shoots, as if they meant to rise in the world 
whether or no, then bring them into a warm 
room and the fullest light you can give. 
A few at a time is the pleasantest way, that 
so each may be enjoyed with the completest 
enjoyment, taking first those that seem the 
most forward. Place them as near as pos- 
sible to your sunniest window ; and remem- 
ber that now they will be very thirsty things 
indeed. Yet do not turn the soil into 
mud. I have not forgotten yet the look of 
one poor beauty, which seemed to have 
been just drowned out. The owner shewed 
it, exulting ; but the tender green shoot got 
no further. 

Turn the pots often, after they are placed 
in the window, to keep the plant-growth 
erect and symmetrical. It is melancholy 
enough to see a tall hyacinth lopping all to 



GARDENING BY M YSELF. 2 1 9 

one side in its eagerness to find the sun ; 
not rising proudly up from its encircling 
leaves, but creeping out between them to- 
wards the window. Keep watch, therefore, 
and straighten your plants (of all sorts) 
every day if need be, by turning them 
round. The mere flower stem, of course, 
you could tie up ; but the bells would still 
have their own way. And besides, things 
never look so pretty tied, if they will stand 
up without it. 

Sometimes the leaves seem to get ahead 
of the flowers, and they grow tall and 
strong, while the little head of blossoms 
peeps timidly out from the very bottom of 
the cluster, but ventures no more. If you 
see this weakness of disposition in any of 
3^our hyacinths, then treat them thus : Twist 
up a small cone of rather thick paper, leav- 
ing a little hole at the small end, and set it 
down close over the blossom shoot, within 
the leaves. Thrown thus into .sudden twi- 
light, with a single spot of brilliant light 
above its head, the spike will generally soon 



220 GARDENING BY MYSELF, 

tire of its seclusion and begin to grow ; 
stretching itself up, reaching towards the 
sunshine which comes glinting through the 
paper cone and tells of the wonderful world 
beyond. And once in fair progress, the 
cone may be taken off and the aroused shoot 
left to itself 

Bulbs in the house are much more likely 
to suffer from heat than cold. This is true 
of almost all house plants. Yet some few 
like the heat ; and it now and then happens 
that a young seedling, or delicate just- 
rooted cutting, gets chilled. A keen wind 
sifting in through the window, a sudden 
change of weather, a neglected fire, may 
bring this about ; and then the little plant 
droops and hangs its head, and looks un- 
mistakably forlorn. In such cases I have 
found nothing so good as setting the plant 
at once in a very warm place. Sometimes 
on a high shelf in a stove-heated room, 
sometimes on the hearth before our open 
wood fire, I have placed the chilled things ; 
and presently, leaf by leaf, they would re- 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 221 

vive and straighten up and ''come to.' 
Of course you must watch carefidly against 
their getting too hot. 

But if the plants have been not only 
chilled but frozen, then you must treat them 
just the other way. Keep them as cool as 
possible (only above more freezing), and let 
neither fire nor sun come near them. A 
cold shower-bath will be much more bene- 
ficial. 

Do they say that last words should be 
few ? There are so many words that might 
be said about flowers, which even with all 
my talking I have failed to speak ! 

For instance, you all want to find out the 
secret of perpetual violets, which — (honest- 
ly) I do not know myself. " Ever-blooming " 
varieties are in the catalogues, but whether 
they will really give twelve months of 
sweetness — or six, for that matter — in return 
for anything less expensive than glass and 
gardeners, is something I have never yet 
proved to my own satisfaction. Even 
violets have their notions. It used to be 



222 G^ RDENING BY M YSELF. 

said in New York, that the double Neapo- 
litans would not bloom south of Twentieth 
street for love or money. 

Then winter roses. If 3^ou can keep a set 
of them in pots through the summer, or even 
from the early fall, giving them the best of 
care and attention, so that the pots will be 
full of zvorking roots, i. e., the little white, ten- 
der rootlets which are the very power of a 
working plant ; and if you can give the 
roses abundant moisture overhead, and 
50° by night and 65°-70° by day, — and if 
you have the right kinds, — then you may 
have plenty of bloom all winter. 

If this is not possible for you, as it rarely 
is for me, then be content with substitutes. 
Take forget-me-nots, when the violets fail ; 
and when those pass away, enjoy the beauty 
of your blue lobelias. And for the roses, — 
you must learn to love even the leafless 
twigs, and to wait. Bulbs will give you 
colour, and sedums will give you soft green 
to contrast with your darker ivy ; and 
Solanum jasminoides will climb over your 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 



223 



windows and cover itself, the winter 
through, with lovely white clusters ol 
bloom. 

*' There are briars besetting every path 
That call for patient care ; 
There is a cross in every lot, 

And an earnest need for prayer ; 
But a iowly heart that leans on Thee, 
Is happy anywhere.** 




